Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 6382.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 1260, a bill that recognizes June 2008 as National Internet Safety Month, and supports helping all citizens, especially our children, to learn more about being safe and responsible online.

The Internet is truly transformational technology that over 21 million teens--87 percent of kids across the Nation--take advantage of everyday. While this technology has presented our children with unprecedented opportunities, it has also presented our kids with new dangers.

Just as we tell our kids not to talk to strangers when we send them off to school, the digital age now requires us to give our children the same warning when they log on to the Internet. Parents, educators, Internet safety organizations, and law enforcement have taken extraordinary measures to proactively help our children avoid the dangers that exist on the Internet, and we must continue to increase our efforts to raise the level of awareness for the need for online safety.

I have long been a strong supporter of internet safety efforts, and I believe that Congress must continuously update our laws to keep our children safe from sexual predators who would exploit our children with this technology. I strongly urge you to support House Resolution 1260 to make sure that all citizens know about the importance of online safety.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 6307 a bill that makes a number of critical changes to the child welfare system to better connect children in foster care with the services, healthcare and education programs they need.

This bill includes legislation I introduced earlier this year which would provide tribes with the same direct access to federal funding for foster care and adoption services that states currently receive. Under current law, funds under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act cannot go directly to tribes, leaving Indian and Alaska Native children living on tribal lands without direct access to services which are an entitlement to all other children in similar circumstances. While most tribes provide some level of basic foster care or permanency services, they are not able to provide the comprehensive level of services that children under state custody receive via Title IV-E.

My legislation, which has been included in this bill, would remedy this situation by providing equity to Native American children who are in need of foster care and adoptive services. It would do this by allowing tribes to apply to the Department of Health and Human Services to directly administer Title IV-E foster care and adoption programs.

This legislation is supported by many child welfare organizations including Child Welfare League of America, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Public Human Services Association as well as numerous tribes and tribal organizations.

I urge you to support H.R. 6307 to make sure that all children in foster care have a better chance at success in school and the workforce.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 6331, the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act, legislation that strengthens the Medicare Program and maintains our commitment to rural America.

Rural America continues to be challenged by shortages of health care providers, barriers to health care access, and geographic isolation. In my own home State of North Dakota, approximately 80 percent of the State is designated as a partial or full county Health Professional Shortage Area. In order to address these unique challenges, the Medicare Modernization Act, MMA, enacted special payment enhancements to make sure that rural health care facilities and providers have the resources they need to deliver quality care in their communities.

Unfortunately, many of these important provisions are set to expire and further assistance is needed to ensure that seniors living in rural America have access to quality, affordable health care. That is why I introduced H.R. 2860, the Health Care Access and Rural Equity, H-CARE, Act, bipartisan legislation that addresses these and other barriers to quality health care by recognizing the unique characteristics of health care delivery in rural areas and assisting rural health care providers in their efforts to continue to provide quality care to rural Americans.

I am pleased that the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act, MIPPA,

of 2008 incorporates many important provisions from H-CARE that will do much to protect the fragile rural health care safety net. More specifically, MIPPA will do the following:

Reauthorize and expand the FLEX Grant Program to include a new grant program that could mean up to $1 million to Richardton, North Dakota, as they convert from their status as a Critical Access Hospital;

Extend Section 508 of the Medicare Modernization Act which provides nearly $10 million a year to North Dakota hospitals to give them the resources they need to compete in an increasingly competitive labor market;

Ensure that rural doctors are paid the same rate for their work as their urban counterparts by extending the 1.0 work floor on the Medicare work geographic adjustment applied to physician payments bringing in $9 million to North Dakota through 2009;

Improve Medicare reimbursements for Critical Access Hospitals by directly increasing payments for critical lab services such as blood testing and other diagnostic services;

Boost reimbursements to sole community hospitals by updating the data used to calculate their Medicare reimbursements;

Protect access to rural ambulance services by providing rural ambulance providers an additional 3 percent of their Medicare reimbursement in order to help cover their costs;

Require prompt payment to rural pharmacies by Medicare prescription drug plans;

Extend a provision that allows 19 North Dakota hospital-based labs to directly bill Medicare for pathology services; and

Expand access to telehealth services by allowing hospital-based renal dialysis facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and community mental health centers to be reimbursed under Medicare for telehealth services.

I would also like to express my appreciation of the Chairman's consideration of technical corrections to recently enacted reforms to the Long Term Care Hospital payment system under Medicare and I look forward to continuing to work with him to resolve this issue.

Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act is a good bill that has been endorsed by the National Rural Health Association and deserves every Members' support.

Madam Speaker, on June 4, 2008, I missed rollcall vote No. 374. Had I been present, I would have voted in the following manner:

Rollcall No. 374 ``aye.''

Mr. Chairman, on May 22, 2008, I missed rollcall vote No. 361. Had I been present, I would have voted in the following manner: Rollcall No: 361--``aye.''

Amendment No. 32 Offered by Mr. Holt

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I'm surprised to hear my Republican friends talk about their dismay that AMT is not in this package. AMT was not in the President's budget, not one nickel, not one cent. I never heard one word in the Ways and Means Committee, not a word that I can recall, of dismay from my Republicans that the President didn't address AMT.

This bill before us is to address a number of expiring provisions including energy. Good gosh, with oil approaching $130 a barrel, you would think we could bust out an energy portion and make an immediate response. The American people deserve no less.

Just take, for example, one provision: The wind production tax credit expires at the end of the year. But to be effective, a wind power plant has to be invested, constructed, and turning energy in order to qualify under the 2008 provision for the production tax credit. What that means in real terms is that already activity is being placed at risk. Financing packages are being denied for growing wind power in this country.

Our upside potential on harnessing power for wind is immense. But even the, I'd say paltry, 1-year extension under the bill, because this industry deserves much more than 1 year, is placed at risk now by Republican opposition.

Fundamentally, we believe if we are going to extend these tax provisions, we need to find revenue offsets so that we don't drive the deficit deeper. I think what this debate is really about is a very different vision. They're happy to just run up the debt even deeper by extending these provisions without the pay-fors. We refuse to do that. As important as these provisions are, we are not going to let our kids pay for them. We will pay for them right here and now by finding the appropriate offsets.

So for the interest of the people in this country in getting renewable energy sources, especially wind power, let's advance this legislation.

I thank the chairman. The rhetoric is a little overblown against this bill, as it was the first time it was before us, as it was when we passed it on final passage.

The fact is, this bill spends billions less than the last farm bill. This bill increases the baseline on conservation, and this bill is the result of some of the best bipartisan activity I've seen in this place to develop and produce a fine product. It responds to the needs of consumers having a hard time buying their groceries with increased nutrition support. It responds to the struggles of family farmers meeting the incredibly high cost of getting their crop in with better risk protection, and it does so in a collaborative measure.

As my friend, Bob Goodlatte, said last week, this isn't Republicans voting for a Democrat farm bill, this is the parties coming together to build a strong collaborative product.

I urge us to override the President's veto of this very important bill for rural America.

Madam Speaker, we are in the midst of a global food crisis. Rising food prices are negatively affecting the world's poorest people, who frequently spend 80 percent of their income on food. As a result, the world's most vulnerable populations, including an entire generation of children, are fighting malnutrition every day. Riots and social unrest all over the world over food prices are indicative of the acute nature of this problem. The time to act is now.

Over the last 50 years, the United States has been the leader in international food aid. We have been able to sustain this role even during eras that were extremely tough on foreign aid. This doesn't mean that the structure can't be improved, but I do believe it is a strong testament to the current structure.

Through the Food, Conservation and Security Act of 2008, also known as the farm bill, we look to address this global crisis by helping to fight hunger and provide food assistance around the world. The farm bill does this by increasing oversight and monitoring of food aid programs. It requires the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to increase the use of program monitors, conduct more evaluations of food aid impact, and implement best practices for food aid delivery. The farm bill will also allow USAID to pre-position more food overseas to respond to disasters more quickly. With greater attention toward identifying food shortages earlier, the food aid programs can reach people in need and respond before crises worsen.

I am also very proud to say that the farm bill establishes a $60 million pilot program for local or regional purchases of food aid. This pilot program provides the opportunity for local purchases of food aid commodities while ensuring that the purchases do not cause dramatic price increases or exacerbate shortages overseas.

While I am extremely proud of what we have been able to accomplish through the farm bill, this is a serious situation that we must continue to address. As a member of the House Hunger Caucus, I look forward to working with my colleagues to address the issue of world hunger.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the pride I want to express is, as being a member of the Agriculture Committee, which I also serve on, a day like today makes me especially proud of that membership because what is before us is a collaborative product, the majority, the minority, arm in arm, working this through to build the best farm bill we possibly could. A bill that attends to the nutrition needs of our country; a bill that provides the safety net for family farmers; and a bill that safeguards the highest quality, most affordable food supply in the Western world. This collaborative effort would not have been possible but for the leadership of Chairman Peterson, who, at every step of the way, wanted to be inclusive in his leadership style, having not just the majority but the minority fully involved in writing this bill.

I also salute Bob Goodlatte, ranking member of the committee, because he could have walked away, could have said we're just going to do the partisan thing on this bill, but, no, instead played a very important role substantially improving the product of this bill, by virtue of Bob Goodlatte's contribution and the contribution of the members of his caucus on the Ways and Means Committee.

Our farmers are putting into the ground the most expensive crop in the history of U.S. agriculture. I had a farmer tell me last week that running three tractors to get his crop in was running a $10,000-a-day fuel bill. They've got horrific exposure. They need the protection of this farm bill. Please adopt it.

Mr. Chairman, on May 8, 2008, I missed rollcall vote No. 295. Had I been present, I would have voted in the following manner: Rollcall No. 295, ``yea.''

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the point of the farm bill at issue with this motion deals with a concept of public interest. Will private land adjacent to forest land be protected or will it be sold off and developed into very nice, very expensive private lots, taking land out of general public access and enjoyment? That's really the issue.

I believe it's an extremely serious issue, and I'm going to introduce into the Record coverage of this that appeared in the New York Times October 13, 2007, under the title ``As Logging Fades, Rich Carve Out Open Land in West.'' This article cites the prospect of vast timber sales by a company named Plum Creek Timber. And I would quote from the article:

``Some old-line logging companies, including Plum Creek Timber, the country's largest private landowner, are cashing in, putting tens of thousands of wooded acres on the market from Montana to Oregon. Plum Creek, which owns about 1.2 million acres in Montana alone, is getting up to $29,000 an acre for land that was worth perhaps $500 an acre for timber cutting.

`` `Everybody wants to buy a 640-acre section of forest that's next to the U.S. Forest Service or one of the wilderness areas,' said Plum Creek's president and chief executive, Rick Holley.

``As a result, population is surging in areas surrounding national forests and national parks, with open spaces being carved up into sprawling wooded plots, enough for a house and no noisy neighbors.''

And the article goes on to talk about the extraordinary pressure, development pressure, for the wealthy few that can spend recreation dollars buying up and carving up land adjacent to the Forest Service.

As Logging Fades, Rich Carve Up Open Land in West

(By Kirk Johnson)

Whitefish, MT.--William P. Foley II pointed to the

mountain. Owns it, mostly. A timber company began logging in

view of his front yard a few years back. He thought they were

cutting too much, so he bought the land.

Mr. Foley belongs to a new wave of investors and landowners

across the West who are snapping up open spaces as private

playgrounds on the borders of national parks and national

forests.

In style and temperament, this new money differs greatly

from the Western land barons of old--the timber magnates,

copper kings and cattlemen who created the extraction-based

economy that dominated the region for a century.

Mr. Foley, 62, standing by his private pond, his horses

grazing in the distance, proudly calls himself a

conservationist who wants Montana to stay as wild as

possible. That does not mean no development and no profit.

Mr. Foley, the chairman of a major title insurance company,

Fidelity National Financial, based in Florida, also owns a

chain of Montana restaurants, a ski resort and a huge cattle

ranch on which he is building homes.

But arriving here already rich and in love with the

landscape, he said, also means his profit motive is

different.

``A lot of it is more for fun than for making money,'' said

Mr. Foley, who estimates he has invested about $125 million

in Montana in the past few years, mostly in real estate.

The rise of a new landed gentry in the West is partly

another expression of gilded age economics in America; the

super-wealthy elite wades ashore where it will.

With the timber industry in steep decline, recreation is

pushing aside logging as the biggest undertaking in the

national forests and grasslands, making nearby private tracts

more desirable--and valuable, in a sort of ratchet effect--to

people who enjoy outdoor activities and ample elbow room and

who have the means to take title to what they want.

Some old-line logging companies, including Plum Creek

Timber, the country's largest private landowner, are cashing

in, putting tens of thousands of wooded acres on the market

from Montana to Oregon. Plum Creek, which owns about 1.2

million acres here in Montana alone, is getting up to $29,000

an acre for land that was worth perhaps $500 an acre for

timber cutting.

``Everybody wants to buy a 640-acre section of forest

that's next to the U.S. Forest Service or one of the

wilderness areas,'' said Plum Creek's president and chief

executive, Rick Holley.

As a result, population is surging in areas surrounding

national forests and national parks, with open spaces being

carved up into sprawling wooded plots, enough for a house and

no nosy neighbors.

Here in Flathead County, on the western edge of Glacier

National Park, the number of real estate transactions, mostly

for open land, rose by 30 percent from 2003 to 2006,

according to state figures. The county's population is up 44

percent since 1990.

The United States Forest Service projects that over the

next 25 years, an area the size of Maine--all of it bordering

the national forests and grasslands--will face development

pressure and increased housing density.

But the equally important force is the change in ownership.

According to a Forest Service study, not yet published, more

than 1.1 million new families became owners of an acre or

more of private forest from 1993 to 2006 in the lower 48

states, a 12 percent increase. And almost all the net growth,

about seven million acres, was in the Rocky Mountain region.

Institutions, pension funds and real estate investment

trusts have been particularly aggressive buyers. Over the

last 10 years, at least 40 million acres of private forest

land have changed hands nationwide, said Bob Izlar, the

director of the Center for Forest Business at the University

of Georgia. It is a turnover that Mr. Izlar said was

unmatched at least since the Great Depression.

Here in the West, questions of clout and class have been

raised by the new arrivals.

This year, the conservation group Trout Unlimited, which

had been considering ending its involvement in disputes

between private landowners and fishermen over public access

to fishing streams, backtracked after its members rose up in

protest. Some members accused the group of siding with the

landowners by not fighting for fishermen's access rights.

In parts of Colorado where communities have committed tax

money to preserve open space, conflicts have erupted on the

borders of the public lands over whether the programs--which

in many cases buy out an owner's right to develop property,

but not the property itself--are simply enriching landowners

who keep the land and the public off, too.

``When you're there, you're on four million acres,'' said

Michael Carricarte, who bought an 800-acre property in

Glenwood Springs, Colo., in 2005, and now has the place,

bordered on three sides by federal land, up for sale, asking

$23.5 million.

``To get to where our property touched public land would

take three hours by public road, but from our house it was 10

minutes by four-wheeler or Jeep,'' he said.

Mr. Carricarte, 39, said he was now in the process of

selling a conservation easement to the Aspen Valley Land

Trust that would lock 600 acres, all bordering public land,

into permanent preservation.

Longtime residents tied to the old timber economy are

finding it difficult to keep up. In parts of New Mexico and

Colorado, the timber industry has all but collapsed; log

harvests in the national forests have fallen to about one-

fourth of what they were 20 years ago in the Rocky Mountain

region, and less than a tenth what they were in the Pacific

Northwest.

Some privately owned timberlands have increased production,

but in the West, where more than two-thirds of all forest

land is publicly owned (compared with about one-sixth in the

eastern United States) private owners, even if they want to

allow logging, cannot make up the difference.

Ronald H. Buentemeier, a second-generation forester, said

he struggled every day to get enough wood to stoke the

family-owned mill he runs in Montana, the F. H. Stoltze Land

and Lumber Company.

``There's not enough private land out there,'' said Mr.

Buentemeier, a blunt-talking 66-year-old with a flat-top crew

cut. ``We've been pulling rabbits out of the hat to keep

going.''

In ways that would have been unthinkable only a few years

ago, environmentalists and representatives of the timber

industry are reaching across the table, drafting plans that

would get loggers back into the national forests in exchange

for agreements that would set aside certain areas for

protection.

Both groups are feeling under siege: timber executives

because of the decline in logging,

and environmentalists because of the explosion of growth on

the margins of the public lands.

One of the most ambitious proposals is here in Montana. It

would allow some logging in the Beaverhead and Deerlodge

National Forests in the state's southwest corner in exchange

for the designation of new areas within the forests as

permanent wilderness.

Some timber companies say that gaining conservationists as

allies may be the only way to get back into the national

forests, and so stay in business. But both sides say that

success will require a turn of the historical momentum

against logging in the West that began in the early '90s.

A court decision in 1991 involving the northern spotted owl

required the Forest Service to manage for more than just

timber production. The national forests in the northern

Rockies constricted logging, fostering expansion in other

forest areas like the South.

``If there's anything the industry should have learned over

the years, it's that we can't do this by ourselves,'' said

Gordy Sanders, the resource manager at Pyramid Mountain

Lumber, one of the mill operators involved in the Beaverhead

and Deerlodge negotiations.

Many environmentalists say they have come to realize that

cutting down trees, if done responsibly, is not the worst

thing that can happen to a forest, when the alternative is

selling the land to people who want to build houses.

Stoltze Land and Lumber, for example, which owns about

36,000 acres near the border of Glacier National Park, has

said that the failure of the logging industry would leave the

company no option but to sell land into the booming

development market.

That prospect chills the blood of people like Anne Dahl,

the director of the Swan Valley Ecosystem Center, a

conservation and education group.

``I'm a former tree hugger who was opposed to everything,

every timber sale,'' Ms. Dahl said, ``but now I see that the

worst thing you can do is lose it all to development.''

Other new partnerships are emerging. Last year, the

Confederated Salish and Kootenai Indian tribes, which have a

reservation south of Whitefish, joined with conservationists

to buy a square mile of land from Plum Creek that was deemed

crucial to the endangered bull trout.

The tribes chipped in $4.8 million, half the purchase

price, and the Trust for Public Lands put together the other

half. The two parties recently completed a plan to manage the

property jointly, said the Salish and Kootenai tribal

chairman, James Steele Jr.

Plum Creek, based in Seattle, changed its corporate

structure in 1999 to become a real estate investment trust.

Some Plum Creek property has been bought by conservation

groups, including about 68,000 acres in the Blackfoot Valley

northwest of Helena. Negotiations continue for more

conservation sales, with money surging into funds organized

by groups like the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for

Public Lands.

Mr. Holley, the Plum Creek executive, said that his company

was committed to both the timber and real estate businesses,

but that only a small percentage of its land, perhaps 30,000

acres or so, had the combination of attractions--proximity to

public lands but also to other amenities, like shopping and

restaurants--to make sale for development feasible.

The Forest Service, meanwhile, is struggling to find its

own balance. A spokesman for the agency said that the

national forests across the West were increasingly tilting

toward recreation and away from logging. But, the growth in

population on the forests' edge also means more need than

ever to thin the trees, through some logging, if only for

wildfire protection.

Tom Tidwell, the regional forester for 25 million acres of

national forest that includes Montana, northern Idaho, North

Dakota and part of South Dakota, said the Forest Service was

eager to keep timber companies in business to help with the

thinning.

``We're more in the need of the industry,'' Mr. Tidwell

said. ``It's essential that we have someone to do that work

so that taxpayers don't have to pay for it.''

One broiling and unresolved issue is who gets to use the

land as it changes hands.

Most private timber tracts in the West, including those

owned by Plum Creek, have traditionally been open to

recreational use, treated as public entry ways into the vast

national forests, grasslands and wilderness. areas that in

Montana alone add up to nearly 46,000 square miles, about the

size of New York State. But in many places, the new owners

are throwing up no trespassing signs and fences, blocking

what generations of residents across the West have taken for

granted--open and beckoning access into the woods to fish,

hunt and camp.

``Part of our character is that we have so much big sky and

open country,'' said Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana, a

Democrat who has publicly sparred with Plum Creek about its

land sales. ``We're going to have to be creative. There's no

textbook written on how to do this.''

So the proposal at issue here is something different. It would provide a new category of tax credit bonds and establish a national program allowing the issuance of $500 million in tax-exempt timber conservation bonds. The way it's structured, the bonds will be issued by a nonprofit organization whose holdings consist primarily of forest lands. Their board of directors would include specified representation of public officials as well as conservation organizations. The funds from the bonds will be used to purchase sizable tracts of forest lands, a minimum of 40,000 acres protected from the kind of development I was referencing earlier. And this acreage would have to be adjacent to U.S. Forest Service lands, basically leveraging the critical area already protected in Forest Service holdings. At least half of the land acquired would be transferred to the Forest Service. The development in previously forest lands not only diminishes substantially the public use and enjoyment potential of this property; it increases significantly the public cost.

We've all seen these forest fires across the West and the lavish homes they have taken out. We've also witnessed the extraordinary taxpayer dollars spent fighting to the very best effort of our talented firefighters, trying to protect these beautiful, extraordinary properties carved into areas that were previously pristine forest.

Now, an issue was raised in terms of whether this was simply too narrow a tax benefit. The bonds sold under this provision would go to numerous holders of qualified forestry conservation bonds; so there's no special earmark-type interest there. And when you consider the fact that half of the holdings have to be transferred to the United States Forest Service, we think everyone in the country is a beneficiary of this provision in that area.

We voted on this once before in the House, debated it as part of the energy bill. It passed 235-181. And at that time a discussion was held. The minority leader raised an issue in terms of whether we ought to be talking about preserving trees and fish or something like that, his argument went, in the context of an energy bill. Well, we decided to at that time--the bill did not ultimately become law; so it's back before us again. But, clearly, there can be no issue raised about its appropriateness for consideration as part of a farm bill. A farm bill is where we address forest issues. General forestry legislation is within the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committees. We have passed farm bills that have included provisions addressing forestry, especially on private lands. In addition, the U.S. Forest Service is within the jurisdiction of the Department of Agriculture. So we think attaching it to the farm bill certainly makes sense in many respects.

But to be candid, this wasn't a provision that originated in the House. It originated in the Senate. I have been party to discussions now going over the last couple of weeks that have involved many, many issues in difference between the House and the Senate. That's what happens when you reach the final stages of bringing a bill out of conference committee. There are back-and-forth negotiations. And this ended up in the bill, a bill that, in my opinion, was improved in very substantial ways by priorities that we also have in the House. Certainly, the $10.3 billion commitment into nutrition, helping people afford food at a time when the cost of groceries has risen so dramatically, this is going to be a feature directly responsive to priorities we've had in the House. It's all part of the negotiation process. There will be stuff in this bill that I think anyone will like. There will be stuff in this bill that people will be less enthusiastic about. It's a great big bill. But in balance I believe this reasonably is in the package. I like the fact that it addresses this subdividing of this forest land adjacent to the U.S. Forest Service. I like keeping the big tracts and expanding U.S. Forest Service holdings at a time when they're under such extraordinary development pressure, which would take it out of, basically, public access and enjoyment.

So I think that this proposal is fine in the bill, and I would therefore urge a ``no'' vote on the motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I have enormous respect for each of the speakers, my friends, on the other side. I think they have made their points well. But I would like us to come back to really what's at stake with the issue in front of us. Essentially, we want to avoid a bridge to wealthy development communities placed into pristine forest lands adjacent to U.S. forests. I earlier referenced a New York Times article covering this extraordinary development pressure that's on these lands.

I would be happy to yield.

October 17, 2007.

Reclaiming my time.

Well, my friend, I think we are talking about a different section of the economy. In fact, economic analysis of the functioning economy shows that there has been extraordinary wage growth of the wealthiest 1 percent, top 10 percent, consumptive patterns have continued unabated at the peak earning levels in our economy. And it is those people that are the customers for this land. This isn't your average Joe deciding, hey, Ma, let's move to Montana and buy a little forest land. No. There's no jobs there other than former timber industry jobs. The economy is in transition there. These are wealthy people that want to have essentially recreational property in areas we can't imagine.

One of the individuals referenced in that article has invested about $125 million in Montana. It talks about his not liking what a logging company was doing. They began logging too much of the view in front of his yard. So he bought the land. He bought all the mountain that they were mining on. That's the kind of guy that we are talking about.

They talk about another guy here. They quoted a man named Michael Carricarte who bought an 800-acre property in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, in 2005. He has got the place bordered on three sides by Federal land. And he is now asking $23.5 million for it.

This isn't the kind of property that is involved with our earlier discussion about the housing crisis. This is quite a different deal entirely. And it is for those reasons that I think it is important that we act to preserve the public interest.

We are in a recession. But it is not a recession that is diminishing the development pressure on forest lands. And we are not going to be in a recession forever. And that pressure, especially as baby boomers age and have this disposable income, is only going to continue. In fact, they talk about the pressure being extraordinary. And again, in Montana, more than 1 million acres are under threat alone.

So basically this provision has been fashioned, and if you think about it, a 40,000-acre minimum, it is entirely protected by Fish and Wildlife plans. Now my friend, Mr. McCrery, cites that as a negative thing. I think essentially if the goal of this is to try and preserve property, it might be a good thing. And of course there is a provision for a perpetual conservation easement. So really the aim of this, and I think it will achieve it, is to make certain we don't have private development, little lots with great big houses chunked into the pristine forest. We would like to preserve this. We would like to actually expand the holdings of the U.S. Forest

Service and have the land adjacent to it protected under perpetual conservation easement.

So all in all, there certainly is a sound rationale behind this proposal. It was included in the negotiations back and forth between the House and the Senate. And again it certainly invites the kind of questions and scrutiny that this provision has been put under tonight. But I think when you think about the importance in this country of preserving for general public use and enjoyment, we certainly come down on the right side as compared to dividing this into little lots and having that kind of development in this area.

So I think that we have covered the area. Is the gentleman ready to close? If so, I will wrap up now or I will reserve the time.

I think that we have discussed this at the end of a long day. I will reserve the balance of my time, but if the gentleman's comments are in the nature of a close, then I'll yield back without saying anything further.

Madam Speaker, I respond to the constructive tone of the proponent of the motion to instruct with just a few words of explanation.

Essentially there are two risks that farmers cannot control. One of them is if the prices collapse. And we have seen prices collapse often in the years I have been in the House below the cost of raising the crop. In that circumstance, farmers need help.

We also see the risk of production failure where weather and natural disasters produce a broad crop failure. Well, the 2002 farm bill referenced by my friend, Mr. Flake, restored protection for farmers when prices collapse. Prior to that restoration, we had a farm bill that did not respond when prices collapsed, and during the late 1990s we sought not one but two, maybe even three disaster bills to respond to the price collapse. The 2002 farm bill fixed that, and with price support payments that trigger when prices hit a certain low level, we have not had to come the disaster route to deal with price collapse again. The result has been a tremendous savings for taxpayers. We have a farm bill that only pays out when farmers need it, and billions of dollars have been reduced from the baseline for agriculture because the pricing environment has not required the Federal Government to step in with price support.

Now as a matter of budget principle, I would think that Mr. Flake, and we all know he is ever-vigilant on budget matters, would very much like bringing disaster on the budget where it is paid for rather than rely on ad hoc disaster payments that are not paid for, that are emergency spending. And so that is what I want to focus on during the balance of my time.

We know that in our great Nation there will be production circumstances causing disaster losses, and we know that these are going to move around.

This is the U.S. drought monitor for midsummer 2006. We see a broad pattern of drought. The very next year we had other parts of the country facing a drought threat that really could produce disaster losses.

So we know that someplace in the country we're going to have extraordinary circumstances that will literally threaten the family farmers in that region.

Well, why don't we just move ahead then and, with this farm bill opportunity, address that issue, and that's precisely where the conferees are in terms of completing their work on this farm bill. They have a disaster component of this bill. It is paid for in the spending of the farm bill; no off-budget, no emergency spending. It's paid for in the farm bill. And what's more, it involves important reforms as well.

I expect my friend, Mr. Flake, and I agree that when you have ad hoc program, you don't necessarily have the reins around the spending as you'd like.

This bill is very spelled out. It only pays if the entire farm suffers a disaster loss as defined in the statute. Earlier ad hoc programs will pay if just a portion of the farm is hit with disaster- type losses. This is whole farm loss that's provided for.

And we require the farmer to maintain crop insurance. We don't want anybody relying on this disaster program as their risk protection. They've got to provide for their own risk protection with crop insurance, and this would only cover additional losses in the event of a disaster situation.

You might ask, why do you need that if you've got crop insurance? And it's well known that crop insurance leaves a significant percentage of the farmers' costs exposed.

Now, let me just tell you, as I wrap up, why this is so important. We have farmers putting in the most expensive crop in the history of U.S. agriculture. The bankers that I have been visiting with in recent days have told me that operating loans to our farmers are running 30 percent above the amounts last year because of the extraordinary costs our farmers are encountering.

I had a farmer tell me today that putting in his crop near Edgeley, North Dakota ran $10,000 a day just for the fuel burned by the three tractors. $10,000 a day. That means, while farmers usually put it all on the table and take enormous risk at the beginning of

a planting season, this year, more than ever before, they've got it all hanging out there. And if we don't have protections, those farmers that might find themselves in a disaster loss situation would take a hit that might very well threaten the continuation of that family farm.

So we think the best way to deal with this prospect of disaster losses is to put it in the farm bill, make sure that it's paid for, provided in the budget, and that's precisely what we have done.

I would resist the motion to instruct, and urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. Because I yielded back my time, anticipating you were rising to close, if you would give me leave, I'll have about 2 minutes, 3 minutes of answers to that.

I thank my friend.

First, there have been mistakes made in the administration of farm programs. And, for example, the gentleman's illustration about the Texas ranch issue relative to the space shuttle tragedy, that was not under an ad hoc disaster bill, but we believe it was very poor administration of relief under another program called section 32. We would hope that never happens again. Action is taken here to make certain that it doesn't.

The disaster bill precludes losses on livestock. Moreover, they can only go in areas designated by the Secretary as having sustained a disaster loss; at which time, in the legislation, it's specified that the whole farm of the applicant has to suffer a qualifying loss. So no more if you happen to live in an area where somebody else got hit, we got a check for you. That's done, and tightened up considerably under this program.

We think that all of those are good government provisions. We also addressed in the 2002 bill, and expect it to anticipate continuing in this bill, price support protection in the farm bill. So we have not had, since 2002, a disaster bill to respond to collapsed prices in the marketplace. We expect that that would absolutely continue. We've got a provision in the farm bill to respond to that. No ad hoc disaster required for price collapse.

And then the gentleman's question to me, I forgot. I yield back for clarification, and I'll respond directly.

Well, I can only speak for the comments the gentleman

quoted from my own debate. And what I was so happy about the 2002 bill is we were restoring a safety net for farmers when prices collapsed. During the earlier farm bill, known as Freedom to Farm, that protection had been taken away and we had to resort to ad hoc disaster bills when the prices collapsed. We took care of that in the last firm bill and we have not had a disaster bill on that since.

This disaster bill relates to production loss. And we're always going to have disasters in our country that bedevil some of our farmers relative to disaster dimension losses. We put them in the budget. We specify in tight reform language how the losses would be compensated. And we think it's good budgeting.

Will the gentleman yield on that?

We fixed the Katrina issue. That's another provision, not a disaster provision. That's a provision that relates to what's called beneficial interest, and we make adjustments reforms along the lines sought by the White House on that one.

If the gentleman would yield, I think it's the gentleman's motion so he has the right to close.

Actually, I'm going to ask unanimous consent to get a couple of minutes of my time back, 2 minutes of my time back, to basically put in perspective some of the points the gentleman has raised; and then you might want to reserve your time so you have the opportunity to close.

Madam Speaker, I ask for 2 minutes of my time back that I yielded.

Madam Speaker, I will speak under Mr. Flake's time, and thank you for yielding.

The reason I yielded back was because I thought this was about ready to draw to a close. There are a couple of points that I do want to make and believe the record needs to make clear.

First, under the last farm bill, we haven't added billions. We've reduced billions from the baseline for agriculture. Because we stopped the ad hoc disaster response when prices collapsed, we had a provision in the farm bill to respond when prices collapsed. Guess what? Prices did not collapse, and the farm bill did not need to extend itself to help farmers. The market took care of the farmers. That saved, over the last farm bill, $18 billion off of the baseline in commodity payments.

Now, what happens as we try to build the farm bill this year? It means we have $18 billion less to do it. We have come up with a farm bill that has additional spending, every dollar of it paid for without raising taxes.

And so this farm bill is a very tightly constructed, paid-for farm bill in contrast to the last farm bill where $73 billion was added to the baseline, none of it paid for, under the Republican majority that previously ruled this Congress.

The final point I would make is that we are going to have disasters. They will threaten the very continuation of family farms across this country. It depends who happens to be afflicted with the disaster at a certain point in time. The option before this Congress is we're either going to prefund, pay for, and budget a disaster response anticipating these losses, or we're going to continue to rely on ad hoc, off-the- budget responses, which we believe is a less responsible way to proceed.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and allowing me to make these rebuttal points.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Essentially, we didn't have the funding in place to support a paid- for disaster bill. Later, negotiations between House and Senate negotiators, and I have been right in the middle of it, found ways to fund the bill, and at that point in time, the disaster title came back in.

If I just can respond briefly.

Madam Speaker, the ad hoc disaster programs that we have passed did not figure into the agriculture baseline so they have not counted.

Additionally, the baseline that we're operating under for this farm bill is below the baseline that we operated under for the last farm bill.

Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 8 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 7, 2008, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the motion to instruct.

I thank the Speaker.

We agree that under normal circumstances a farm bill considered at this time ought to be scored on the March, 2008, baseline. But let me emphatically emphasize there has been nothing normal about the development of this farm bill.

We're moving into our 17th month of intensive work on this farm bill. I'm telling you we have encountered every barrier you can possibly imagine, and we are almost done. We have almost got this to conference committee and to the floor. As the majority leader indicated, we are hopeful it will be on the floor next week.

During the period of time we have been working on this bill, the House passed this farm bill July 27, 2007, and it took nearly 5 months in addition before the Senate passed its bill, December 14, 2007. If they would have gotten their bill done earlier, we probably could have concluded this. This wouldn't even have come up. We would have had the farm bill out of here by now. The Senate-passed bill, however, is 1,876 pages long; the House bill, 160 pages long. That alone will tell you we had an awful lot of work to reconcile these two bills.

The Senate uses a different rule relative to determining baseline, a rule used by the House in the construction of the 1996 farm bill as well as the 2002 farm bill. This principle is pretty simple: If you have done most of the work on the legislation under the old baseline, you can conclude the work. It would undo everything to suddenly have the new scoring requirement. And if the Senate didn't go along, you would have the crazy situation of trying to do one baseline for the House, another baseline for the Senate, trying to meld those in conference committee, and you will never get this thing done.

So the gentleman's motion to instruct has an intellectual basis for it, but the reality of this farm bill is we have worked now 17 months building the bill, most of that time under the 2007 farm bill. When we passed the bill in the House, we had no idea what the 2008 baseline would be; so it's not like

we were forum shopping or trying to pick the most lenient number. It was just the only way we could proceed. And if we would at this point in time do a baseline shift, I'm telling you this project, so close to home, gets put back to square one.

I have asked my friend and colleague Chairman John Spratt to join me in this discussion because, obviously, when it comes to budget matters, he has broad respect across both sides of the aisle and I believe he can advance a more detailed discussion on some of the rules at issue as we respond in opposition to the motion.

I yield to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Reclaiming the time----

I would just like to point out one quick thing. This is what PAYGO accomplishes. In 2002, pay-as-you-go budget discipline was allowed to expire. The farm bill, when it was passed, added to the baseline $73.5 billion. I believe the gentleman from Wisconsin voted for that farm bill. I did.

Now we have an important restoration of pay-as-you-go discipline, and under the 2007 baseline we have accounted for every dollar of spending in this farm bill. No deficit added, no deepening of the deficit, as figured on the 2007 baseline, compared to a very, very different situation in the 2002 farm bill.

So the gentleman's motion involves, in my view, pointing out that this might not technically jibe with the House rule. I believe that we have learned a lesson from the gentleman's motion. We ought to have our rule like the old rule where the baseline on a discretionary call by the Budget Chair can continue to be the baseline under which you drafted the legislation, because otherwise all of this work could be lost. We need to get this bill done. And we are this close to getting it done.

So with respect to my friend, Mr. Ryan, I would urge that we reject the motion. I will let this statement serve as the close. Let the Ag Committee finish its work; let's pass the farm bill. Let's reject this motion to instruct.

I yield back.