Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The gentleman from Massachusetts knows the respect I have for his knowledge of free market economics. He often scolds us on this side of the aisle when our rhetoric doesn't match our actions. And he is often justified in doing so. I have heard him quote Adam Smith and Milton Friedman with the best of them.

That is why I was baffled to see this bill come to the floor from his committee, a bill that violates the same principles that he has chastened us for not recognizing. He was right then. And he is inconsistent and wrong today.

This bill has ``moral hazard'' written all over it. We know that a party insulated from risk behaves differently than a party that is fully exposed to risk. The truth is here we are insulating home buyers and home owners from risk. And we will simply prolong the housing crisis by doing so.

Let's be real here. The purpose of this legislation is to insulate political parties from risk. That is what we are doing here. If we felt such a need to intervene here, we ought to remember what we did last September when I believe, if I remember right, we encouraged FHA to give no-money-down loans. Why is it that we think that we are so prescient here about what is going to happen?

We can't outguess the market. We shouldn't try to. We simply will delay the bottom and delay and increase the dislocations that will occur when its politicians decide to allocate resources and capital rather than the markets.

Madam Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

Madam Speaker, this motion to instruct conferees is simple. It would urge the farm bill conferees to not include a new permanent disaster program contained in the Senate-passed farm bill. The Senate-passed farm bill included a new and permanent disaster program which has been estimated to cost an additional $5.1 billion.

First of all, I want to commend the House for not including the disaster title. It is not needed. We end up paying far more than we should in the regular subsidy programs; but to add a permanent disaster title is simply heaping too much on the taxpayers. As I go through some of this, you will see why.

According to the Congressional Research Service, since 1989 Congress has passed 35 appropriations authorizations or farm disaster acts that have added more than $60 billion in supplemental funding to USDA programs with just under 8 percent of that coming in the last 10 years. An analysis by the Environmental Working Group showed the Federal Government provided $26 billion in disaster relief payments between 1985 and 2005. Congress spent more than $8 billion in disaster payments between 2002 and 2006, with an additional $3.4 billion being made available for the 2008 omnibus for disaster payments for losses between 2005 and 2007.

So you see, we have regular subsidy programs that are awfully big, and then we are being asked to add a disaster title on top of that. When we debated the bill in 2002, the 2002 farm bill, the idea was to stop the expensive disaster assistance payments. Former Senator Daschle said at that time: ``We are getting rid of these ad hoc disaster payments approaches. We are actually bringing down the cost of the Federal program.''

So in essence we were basically including permanent disaster relief within the farm program in 2002. Or that is what was said at the time. And now we are being asked again, let's add another disaster title because we simply aren't subsidizing enough.

Representative Lucas of Oklahoma said during that debate: ``On the committee, both Republicans and Democrats worked to find a balanced bill so we would not have to come back to Congress and ask for ad hoc disaster bills year after year. We have found that balance in the manager's amendment.'' Again, that was in 2002.

We were told if we passed the bill in 2002, we wouldn't have to come back again and again for disaster payments. But guess what, we were back the next year and the next year and the next year with disaster payments; and we are being asked again here to include a permanent disaster title. Now believe me, if we do this, next year we will be asked to add disaster payments again and the next year again and again. This is nothing more than an effort to increase the baseline, to increase more subsidies going out to farmers.

Representative Pomeroy said in 2002: ``There is a better way to go than to add ad hoc year-to-year disaster bills that leave the farmer and their lenders and their creditors not knowing where they stand. The better way is to put it in the farm bill, just like this bill does.''

Let me remind you, that bill was passed. We did exactly what these Members said we should do in order to avoid ad hoc disaster payments henceforth. Guess what, we didn't. We have seen those payments again and again. Now we are being asked to include a permanent disaster title, only to see these payments again and again. It is simply too much.

When do we stand up and say enough is enough? The taxpayer is on the hook for too much.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

The gentleman mentioned that having these permanent disaster titles built into the budget would be a good thing so we don't have the ad hoc disaster programs. I agree, it would be. But we've done that. That's how the last firm bill was sold to us; that yes, it's a bit bloated; yes, it's bigger than you'd like, but it's going to include disaster payment so we don't have to do ad hoc stuff anymore. We're going to build it into the budget.

I read several quotes. There are several more. Let me just read one more. Representative Combest of Texas said, ``There is a safety net which is built into the program. I think, to my budget conscious colleagues, of which I am one, this is more of an honest way to deal with this problem than ad hoc disaster bill after disaster bill after disaster bill after disaster bill.''

Now, that sounds just like what we heard. This was in 2002. And we've had many ad hoc disaster bills pass since that time. I guarantee you, if we pass this, with this large disaster bill attached to it, we'll see more disaster bills after this time.

The gentleman mentioned that disaster bills come to fill in the gaps when there are bad crop years. That's the purpose of it. In fact, we subsidize crop disaster insurance to the tune of about $3 billion a year, I believe. We've had many programs, many bills to do that. But it hasn't seemed to work because we keep funding on top of that.

If you look at this chart, this chart will show 2002 through 2006, these were not particularly bad years. In the red you will see the subsidies that were given during this time. In the yellow you'll see disaster payments added on top of the programs. So you see, in good years, in bad, it doesn't matter. We seem to have crop disaster programs and money paid out every time, no matter what.

This next chart is quite telling. Shortly before the 2002 Congressional elections, the Bush administration faced growing pressure from ranchers and politicians in a handful of western States that were hit hard by drought. There was pressure to actually do something to help these ranchers.

The USDA responded with a plan to give ranchers cash payments based on how much livestock they owned. Now, to qualify, a rancher had to be in a county that suffered from a drought and declared a disaster by the Agriculture Secretary in 2001 or 2002. Legislation was approved by Congress to extend the livestock program into January of 2003 as well.

Let me just give you one example of how this works. I'll go to this chart later. But all you have to do is to be in a county where some kind of disaster is declared. The rules were loosened so it didn't even have to be a weather-related disaster. Something else could trigger it as well. And all a farmer had to do is say, or a rancher had to do is say, I am from this county, therefore I deserve payment. Per head livestock payment. And that was paid out.

And you had counties that had no disaster at all, or parts of counties, in Arizona we have large counties, only 15 in the State, so you have parts of counties that perhaps weren't suffering any disaster at all where people were collecting payments.

But what you also had, and this will demonstrate the absurdity of the program we have now and the eligibility rules. In Texas here, on February 1, 2003, we had a very unfortunate incident where the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded over Texas, upon re-entry. It scattered over a certain part of the State. The President declared certain counties in Texas a disaster area in order to have emergency services go and collect the debris.

Because that was a national or, I'm sorry, a disaster declared in certain counties, all ranchers had to do in those counties is claim there's a disaster; I'm going to collect benefits for my livestock. And you had, literally, millions of dollars paid out to ranchers for their livestock because of a disaster, a space shuttle exploding over Texas.

Now, that will give you some idea of the eligibility rules that apply here. This, we make no effort in this legislation, nor have we made any effort in any others to really seriously tighten up these eligibility rules. And that is simply wrong to do this.

We are embarking again, let me remind you, in 2002 we were told, let's include a bigger bill, let's have a bigger bill that will include disaster relief, and then we won't need to come back anymore. We'll include it in the base bill. That's better budgeting.

That's exactly what we're hearing today, the same thing, but with no promise that we'll actually get rid, or that we'll actually cut other programs, go into the commodity programs, shave money here to pay it here. No, we're just increasing the baseline substantially.

And I should note, this is not paid for in the bill. The permanent disaster relief is above the base line. We're having to charge fees somewhere else to pay for this. So it's not in the bill. It's not paid for. It's actually above the baseline.

So let me just urge my colleagues, you know, we have a program here that I think all of us, in our candid moments, realizes is out of control. We have subsidies going here that are well beyond what is required and necessary and right and proper. Yet, we continue to do this simply because it makes for good politics. I would think that we're better than that.

I would think that we can rise up, at least now, as the House did, frankly, and say, we shouldn't have a permanent disaster title. Again, I want to commend the House for doing that. But this is why this motion is to instruct the conferees to go with the House version and not the Senate version.

And I would ask my colleague, I would yield for just a minute, if you would, if we felt that a disaster title was so needed, why wasn't it included in the House bill, and why did we rely on the Senate to have it?

I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman.

I will gladly yield.

Well, I'd just like to ask the gentleman. In 2002 didn't we hear exactly what we're hearing today, that if we include a permanent disaster title, that there will be no more need for disaster relief beyond this year?

Reclaiming my time, we heard some of these same arguments in 2002, that we had tightened things up, and that we wouldn't have the ability to game the system. Yet I mentioned the shuttle disaster as one of the more egregious examples. There are plenty of others.

For example, after the Katrina disaster, part of the programs that we have allow, if prices drop substantially, that prices can be locked in at a certain price, and then farmers can go sell on the market afterwards. The system was gamed at that point; to the loss, to the tune of a couple of billion dollars. These were imaginary losses. These were not real losses.

Just 15 seconds, if I could.

Madam Speaker, I would simply say in response to that, this is what we heard in 2002, that we have fixed these loopholes, that this has tightened up. We won't have to have ad hoc disaster payments. There are several types. I mentioned the number of bills that have been passed to provide this type of disaster relief, whether it was for livestock or crop loss or something else. We just passed a myriad of bills to do that. And every time we hear, We've tightened it up; if you just give us a little higher baseline, if you just increase it a little more, then we promise we won't come back again and again and again. And here we are. We're back doing the same thing again.

I would submit, Madam Speaker, that we simply can't do this any more. We simply can't do this.

Let me go to this chart for a minute.

May I inquire as to the time remaining?

I assure my colleagues I won't take my entire 15 minutes, but let me point out this chart right here.

These are areas that have received disaster payments in 11 of the past 21 years. When you think disaster payments, you think this is something that happens once every decade or once every century or something that is an odd occurrence. It doesn't always occur. Yet here we see, look at these dots here. One, you can tell they're highly concentrated. Certain areas keep going back for more again and again and again. These areas where you see the dots received disaster payments 11 out of the last 21 years. One dot equals one recipient here.

Now 11 out of the past 21 years, if you do the math right, that's better than once every 2 years people are coming back for disaster payments, catastrophic losses of some type or another. So the notion that we're taking care of it all, that we won't have any more catastrophic disasters, I think is blown away by this chart because we see again and again.

Another thing that's quite notable with this chart is you see there is a very political disbursement here. I will point out one place, right here at the top of Arkansas. You will see a smattering of dots where this represents, believe me, millions and millions and millions of taxpayer dollars going to disaster relief. But something funny happens here. Once you cross the State line into Missouri, virtually no dots at all. Very little was received at all.

Now, unless droughts respect State boundaries right along the State line, or a tornado is deterred by a barbed wire fence, then this is political. There is no other way to explain this. You look down here near the panhandle of Florida into Georgia and whatnot, there are a lot, and then as soon as you cross over that State line, virtually nothing.

What this suggests to me, and I'm sure anybody who looks at it in candor would say, There's probably a very active farm service organization there that is applying for these grants and going after that drought relief for whatever it's for.

But you have to concede there is no other way to explain this than to see that this is extremely political. That's how it happens. That's how it happened after 2002 when the White House was under much pressure to provide disaster relief before the election was coming up. It doesn't just happen under Democrat's administrations; it happens under Republicans and everyone. We shouldn't allow this to happen.

Let me just close by saying, again, we heard this in 2002, we're hearing it again. We bought it then. We shouldn't have. Let's not include this $5.1 billion disaster program. I'm hearing that it's down to $3.8. That's maybe a good sign.

I would yield 15 seconds.

Madam Speaker, I will reserve.

Madam Speaker, I will yield 2 minutes to the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, I would yield 15 seconds. The question I had asked before of the gentleman is why didn't the House include the disaster.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

I should note, as I did before, this is not below the baseline. There is only room because we're going well above the baseline. We're actually charging fees or doing some other things to free up offset money to actually pay for the disaster.

Sure.

I thank the gentleman.

I should note that the gentleman mentioned that we've cut billions of dollars since the last farm bill. We haven't cut anything. The reason that not as much has been paid out under countercyclical or some of the other programs is being a product of high prices, and that's as the program works. But I should note that even though there have been high prices, we're still having disasters seemingly everywhere with very loose definitions of what a disaster is, and I would suggest that we will have those again, whether or not we include a permanent disaster title. That's what experience tells us. That's what we've learned just over the past few years. It doesn't matter if you include a permanent disaster title or you include this under the baseline, you will have disaster payments go out.

And my plea would be let's stand for the taxpayer here. We don't often do that in the Congress. Let's say that enough is enough, that we can't continue to pay out money on top of money that we said we weren't going to pay out.

Again, I thank my colleagues for their indulgence. I know we went a little longer than we thought.

I would urge support for this motion to instruct.

Let's keep what the House did and reject the disaster title that the Senate put in.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, under rule XXII, clause 7(c), I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 2419.

The form of the motion is as follows:

Mr. Flake moves that the managers on the part of the House

at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses

on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2419 (an Act to

provide for the continuation of agricultural programs through

fiscal year 2012) be instructed not to recede to the

provisions contained in subtitle A of title XII of the Senate

amendment (relating to a permanent agriculture disaster

assistance program).

Madam Speaker, recently I introduced a bill to repeal some of the legislative provisions that have led to an artificial demand for ethanol. H.R. 5911, the Remove Incentives for Producing Ethanol Act of 2008, or RIPE Act, repeals the renewable fuel standard, repeals tax credits for ethanol producers, and repeals tariffs and duties on imported ethanol. These incentives are giving ethanol producers a guaranteed market for their product.

Domestic corn, already a heavily subsidized commodity, has been the primary source of biofuel, and the mandate has encouraged farmers to focus agriculture production away from food production toward fuel production. The Department of Agriculture has said that the biofuel mandate has raised fuel prices as much as 20 percent.

In addition, ethanol's role as a supposed savior for our energy woes has been severely overstated. Ethanol as a fuel yields about 30 percent less energy per gallon than a gallon of gasoline. This is what happens when government picks winners and losers in the economy and the marketplace. Just 4 months ago, we were convinced we had a winner. It's turned out to be a big loser.

We need to remove the incentive. I urge support of H.R. 5911.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in opposition to this bill. H.R. 1195 is purported to be a technical corrections bill. When you hear ``technical corrections,'' you often think of missing commas or misspellings or inverted numbers or other drafting errors. We are doing far, far, far more than that here with this legislation. There are, I believe, more than 200 earmarks that are receiving so-called technical corrections here. These are substantial in nature. They are not simply technical. I think they deserve further scrutiny.

We have all found out what happens when we rush legislation like this through. The underlying bill had 6,300 or 6,200 earmarks, as was mentioned. If you're making technical corrections, they should be technical. These are more than technical. They deserve more scrutiny. We don't want to find out later that we have the same problems that we had before. For that reason, I will oppose the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion to instruct at the desk.

I thank the Chair.

This motion to instruct conferees is simple. It would simply urge farm bill conferees to accept the Senate provision on the payment limits for annual direct payments, which is the same as current law. Again, we are simply asking to accept current law, rather than increase payments limitations. Let me explain.

Under current law, farmers and eligible landowners can receive $40,000 per person in direct payments per year, not including a loophole that currently exists that enables that amount to be doubled. The House-passed farm bill seeks to raise this limit to $60,000 per person, while the Senate passed bill keeps the limit at the $40,000 level as in current law. In essence, this motion to instruct conferees would simply say, retain current law. Don't increase the limit on how much a farmer or landowner can receive in direct payments.

Direct payments are one of the three primary subsidy programs available for commodity crops, along with countercyclical payments and marketing loan payments. Direct payments are paid to farmers and eligible landowners that have had so-called base acreage that was historically farmed for program crops like wheat or cotton or corn. Direct payments go to farmers and landowners whether the whether they farm or not on the property and are independent of crop prices. Simply put, these checks are in the mail to eligible recipients, no matter what the price of commodities.

While these payments were originally intended to transition farmers away from subsidies, it is unfortunate that they have come to take a permanent place in the entitlement spending landscape and that Congress is on the verge of upping the limits on how much recipients can receive.

These payments cost taxpayers more than $5 billion a year, under the last farm bill, that is, and while the bill under consideration might cut them by a minuscule amount, taxpayers will still foot a staggering bill.

These handouts are often distributed to landowners who don't farm. I have even heard anecdotes about rice farmers who later subdivide the land for mini-mansions even, and realtors will advertise that direct payments will come to the new landowners. Lucky them. Get a house on land that was previously a rice farm. You are going to be getting direct payments. How is that? How can we countenance a situation like that continuing?

According to a recent analysis by the Environmental Working Group, with the present loopholes that are available to recipients, ``a total of 1,234 recipients collected direct payment subsidies worth $120,000 or more, costing taxpayers $226 million total. One hundred forty-nine recipients got more than $250,000 in direct payments. The top 10 percent of direct payment subsidy recipients in 2007 collected about 60 percent of this government money.'' These are the payments on which the House-passed bill would increase the limit by 50 percent.

We have a strong agricultural economy at present. Unlike the countercyclical and marketing loan programs, which, if you have a good agricultural economy, don't get paid out, this program keeps paying out no matter what. These are independent of crop prices.

It is unfathomable that U.S. farmers that are enjoying historically low debt-to-asset ratios and consistently high cash receipts and robust farm export values, under this scenario the conferees would need to increase the limit on direct payments beyond the current $40,000 limits. It is unfortunate. It looks like the 2007 farm bill will be a missed opportunity to reform the wasteful farm subsidy programs, like the one I have spoken about.

As approved by the House, the best that can be achieved in terms of reform is a reduction in the income cap for payment eligibility programs from $2.5 million to $1 million or $2 million for married folks. Even though the administration has sought a $200,000 income cap, both the House and the Senate it seems, and it seems the conferees, appear content to continue to allow millionaires to receive farm payments. While acting as if real reform had been made on the income cap, the House-passed farm bill actually relaxes the limits on how much a recipient can receive in farm payments.

We simply cannot go in this direction. We have been told again and again and again by both sides of the aisle that we won't have a farm bill that has the generous subsidy payments that we have had before, that there has to be reform. This is not reform.

Some people may try to sell it and say we are getting rid of a loophole there, so we will have to increase this, and then we will phase it out at some other time. That is probably what we will hear. When you hear that, hold on to your wallet.

You have to remember that this program that we are talking about, this direct payment program was instituted in the nineties as a way to transition farmers away from subsidies. Yet here it is still, a decade later, and we are talking about increasing it. So if anybody tells you we are increasing it so we can actually phase it out easier or somehow lessen payments that will go out, don't believe it. Don't believe it.

Let's vote for this motion to instruct.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Before yielding to the gentleman from Wisconsin, let me simply say that we are not talking about the food stamp program here. We are not talking about nutrition programs or conservation programs. We are talking about direct payments. This is a different program. This is simply an effort to say, let's not increase the amount of money going to direct payments at a time when commodity prices are so high and when the farm community is doing so well. It just not make sense to reform by increasing the subsidy.

I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

I will yield the gentleman an additional 5 minutes, if he would like, as long as he wants.

Sometimes I think we are just talking completely in a vacuum here, that inside the Beltway here in Washington, that we see it somehow differently than the rest of the country. To hear the debate on the other side, you would think it was just one crazy guy from Arizona and another crazy guy from Wisconsin who think that we are out of bounds here. That is hardly the case, and I will read some of what the rest of the country is saying later.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

I appreciate the words of the gentleman from Wisconsin. I too have traveled to Australia and New Zealand, and I talked to the farmers there. They heard the same horror stories there. They worried about the same thing when they got rid of subsidies in New Zealand.

As the gentleman from Wisconsin mentioned, you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who wants to go back to that system because, just as the gentleman from Arkansas just mentioned, they don't like the government telling them what they can and can't farm.

A main element of this program we are talking about right now is that if you are to receive these direct payments, you can't farm specialty crops. You have to farm corn or wheat or rice. You can't do specialty crops. So for all of the talk about we don't want government telling us what we can and can't plant, that is a central element of this program that you accept those restrictions. There is something wrong with that argument when we say we don't want government to tell us; but yes, you can tell us as long as we can collect these direct payments.

The gentleman from Arkansas said that prices are up high now, but they will go down. Yes, they will; but these direct payments will remain the same. That is the problem here. These aren't a safety net, these are just a direct subsidy in many cases whether you farm or not. That's the problem with this.

And we aren't saying get rid of it. I would like to, frankly, if it were up to me. But we're not saying that. All we are saying is keep it the same. Don't increase it. Yet we are hearing the argument that somehow all of the family farms are going to go away unless we increase a direct payment that bears no relationship to crop prices at all. There is something wrong with that argument. So we are competing here in a vacuum.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

I thank the gentleman.

I mentioned that it is often said on the other side that it is just a couple of guys who don't know what they are talking about, and the rest of the country feels differently. Let me tell you what some people around the country are saying about this farm bill.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote: ``The Senate passed a $286 billion farm

bill that makes only minor changes to the bloated agricultural subsidy system that rewards rich farmers for being farmers.''

The Burlington, Vermont, Free Press: ``The farm bill making its way through Congress is a good example of what's wrong with the way major legislation gets passed in Washington.''

The Boston Globe: ``That kind of calculation is just the sort of special-interest politicking that is making voters nationwide question what was gained by giving the Democrats power.''

The East Brunswick, New Jersey, Home News Tribune: ``The farm bill is the sort of confounding public policy document that too often wins approval in Washington; it's stuffed full of pork and misdirected at the same time.''

This is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. The Republicans passed, I thought, what was a far too generous, bloated farm bill back in 2002, and I believe the gentleman from Arkansas and I had a debate at that time.

So this isn't a partisan debate at all. This is a debate about what taxpayers should be required to pay.

The Orlando Florida Sentinel: ``The system those lawmakers would perpetuate dumps billions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies on the farmers of a few crops, whether they need it or not. The largest commercial farms reap the bulk of the subsidies, while most growers get little or nothing.''

The Charleston South Carolina Post Courier: ``So far the impulse to reform has been overwhelmed by the efforts of those representing the beneficiaries of farm program largesse.''

The Winston-Salem, North Carolina Journal: ``The legislation that was designed to put American family farms back on their feet has now become the massive giveaway program to mega corporations that manage family farms. The farm bill is hopelessly bloated and outdated.''

The Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Tribune-Review: ``The U.S. Senate has once again failed to slow the nonstop pigout in multi-billion dollar family farm subsidies.''

The Bismarck, North Dakota Tribune said: ``The provision that would get wide agreement would require that government payments be attributed to an actual, named person, rather than to shadow entities that might even belong to people who do no farming themselves.'' We call that reform.

The Lewiston, Maine Sun Journal wrote: ``The prospect of starving constituents is unpalatable. What's worse, though, is using them as chattel to negotiate subsidies for wealthy farmers.''

As the gentleman from Wisconsin said, we're hardly talking about payments to those who are just getting by. In some cases, payments are going to those with adjusted gross incomes nearing $1 million. Yet we're saying, well, there are large expenses that farmers have. Yes. That's adjusted gross income after expenses are already backed out.

So we're not a couple of guys here who are seeing things differently. I think we're seeing it as the rest of the country does. I think that this place is in a bubble sometimes when we discuss continuing a program to subsidize people who, in many cases, aren't farming, and having subsidies tied not to crop prices at all, not a safety net, mind you, but payments that go and go and go, regardless of whether or not crop prices are high or low.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

May I inquire as to who has the final word.

I will go ahead and reserve until the gentleman has closed.

I've enjoyed this back-and-forth. Let me just say that it's implied again that we don't know what we're talking about somehow, that somehow we're divorced from the farming community and we don't know what they go through.

Let me just say, if you look at the end of my right index finger, it's gone. I left it in an alfalfa field at age 5.

I don't know all the ins and outs. I've been away from farming on a real basis for a while. But it's not a complete alien world to me, and certainly not to my family and relatives.

But let's get back to what we're talking about with this motion to instruct. We're talking about not a safety net at all. We're talking about direct payments, in many cases to farmers who don't farm at all, that is not tied to crop prices, whether they're high or low. This is a relic of reform attempts in the 1990s when we were trying to wean farmers away from subsidies that didn't happen. But these subsidies still remain, despite the fact that the other subsidy programs came back.

And all we're saying here is that, let's keep the limit at current law, at

$40,000 per person, not increase it to $60,000 per person. Yet we're being accused of trying to completely dismantle the family farm by not increasing the subsidies that are being paid out right now. We're simply saying they should remain where they are in current law.

So despite all the talk about stable food prices for citizens of the United States, or whatever else, remember, this motion to instruct has nothing to do with that. This simply has to do with a program that gives direct payments to people who, in many cases, do not farm at all, that has no tie to crop prices, whether they're high or whether they're low.

Let me simply say also that the administration said this week, this plan would result, talking about the current iteration of the farm bill, this plan would result in the continuation of farm subsidy payments to individuals with extremely high incomes.

The administration also said, this is not reform, and does not move Congress closer to a farm bill that the President would sign.

I certainly hope that the President sticks with that commitment. We need a farm bill that honors our commitment to have some fiscal responsibility here. Upping the limit of direct payments, increasing it by 50 percent, is not fiscally responsible.

So I would encourage my colleagues to join us in voting for this motion to instruct. Discount the debate that doesn't have anything to do with this debate on whether or not the conferees should accept the current subsidies or increase them.

With that, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for his words and for all those who have participated. I would encourage a vote in favor of the motion to instruct.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Madam Speaker, under rule XXII, clause 7(c), I hereby announce my intention to offer a motion to instruct on H.R. 2419.

The form of the motion is as follows:

Mr. Flake moves that the managers on the part of the House

at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses

on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 2419 (an Act to

provide for the continuation of agricultural programs through

fiscal year 2012) be instructed to agree to the provisions

contained in section 1703(b)(2) of the Senate amendment

(relating to a $40,000 limitation on direct payments).

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Seventeen amendments were ruled in order. But I can tell you one that wasn't: It was one that I offered. It would have been simple to do it. If we are going to make seventeen amendments in order, why not make this one?

I offered an amendment that would simply have prevented any funds appropriated to the Federal agencies that must participate in these grant programs from being used for earmarks.

Now last week we had a bill called the Beach bill. It came under an open rule; so I couldn't be blocked from offering a similar amendment saying no funds authorized in this bill could be used for earmarks. I offered that amendment and it received overwhelming support. It passed by a 2-1 margin. I believe more than half of the Democrats voted for it and an overwhelming number of Republicans. Why wouldn't we allow that amendment to be offered here?

We have programs here, grant programs, and it's conceivable there could be 5,000 or 6,000 grants offered under this program. The temptation is going to be, as it is with all of the other accounts that we have earmarked in this place, to earmark it, for Members to simply set it aside and say I want this grant to go to one of my constituents or somebody else. And for those who say we haven't traditionally done that with this program, well, we didn't traditionally do it with the Homeland Security bill either. For the first 3 years that it came to the floor, some $32 billion, none of it was earmarked. But last year about $750 million was earmarked, more than 600 earmarks, nearly all of them air-dropped in at the last moment. So we have a habit around here of discovering a pot of money that can be earmarked for our own political purposes.

I know that the overwhelming majority of rank-and-file Members in this body don't want this to happen because it's typically those Members in a leadership position or a committee Chair position or some Member of seniority that typically benefits more than other Members. But I was denied that ability to bring that amendment to the floor today, and I would submit that the more we allow bills like this to come to the floor without amendments being offered like this, the more we're going to suffer.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, as we allow authorization bills to come to the floor and we don't have a prohibition about the money being appropriated later from being earmarked, we are going to see them earmarked. That has been the trend around this place in recent years. That trend is not just continuing; it is accelerating, with the Homeland Security bill, as I mentioned.

So I would appeal to everyone to vote down this rule. Let's bring back a rule that allows a broader scope of amendments, ones that will actually preclude all of the grants authorized in this bill from being earmarked for political purposes.

And with that, I would urge a ``no'' vote on the rule.

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairman, the focus of the Beach Act is to ensure that citizens enjoy recreational activity in the coastal waters and that they can do that safely. That should be the focus of the bill, and that's where I think we should keep the focus of the bill.

The purpose of this amendment is to make sure that the purpose of the bill is not to protect vulnerable Members, vulnerable incumbents. And, unfortunately, that's been the case with a lot of legislation that we have passed in the past. It just simply becomes a magnet for earmarks, for Member earmarks, to protect vulnerable Members

or to reward Members or to go towards Members in leadership or in high positions on particular committees.

The Beach Act authorizes a formula-based grant program to help implement State and local beach monitoring, assessment, notification programs. What we don't want to see is money bled off from these formula-based programs to Member projects. Unfortunately, that has happened. And if we don't think that it will happen with this bill, then we have our heads in the sand.

The purpose of this amendment is simply to say that none of the moneys authorized in this legislation will go toward earmarks, that all of the money as it is now will go toward formula-based funding.

Now, some might say that the Beach Act has not been historically earmarked. That is true. That's how it should remain. The problem is some of the legislation that has not been historically earmarked is now earmarked. In fact, when we passed the Homeland Security bill, which we celebrated today 5 years after, we were told this will not be earmarked. This will be formula-based grants, it will be spread out, but it will not be earmarked. And for 4 years that remained true.

But last year the legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security had a boatload of earmarks in it. According to Taxpayers For Common Sense, the 2008 omnibus bill contained 128 earmarks worth more than $400 million in Homeland Security funding. According to a story by the Hill, 115 new earmarks worth $117 million were air-dropped at the last moment. These were earmarks that we said we weren't going to do anyway in a bill that we said we were not going to earmark. These were, obviously, to assist vulnerable Members.

Many were earmarks in the funding for FEMA's Predisaster Mitigation Program. This was a program intended to ``save lives and reduce property damage'' by providing funds for ``hazard mitigation planning, acquisition, and relocation of structures out of the floodplain.'' In 2007 this program received $101 million to fund competitively awarded projects with no earmarks. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, in 2008 this program received a boost in funding to $114 million, but nearly half of the amount, $51.3 million, was tied to 96 earmarked projects, including earmarks for projects that should not have qualified for funding under the program.

So we could have earmarks in this beach program for projects that aren't even eligible under the formula-based funding that's currently here, and that's what we should all fear. This body has gone far too far over the past several years, under Republicans and Democrats, in bleeding off necessary funding for particular programs just to protect vulnerable incumbents during re-election or just to reward particular Members.

Some people will say, well, we know in Congress better than those faceless bureaucrats in some department. Well, if that is the case, then we should have parameters. We should provide oversight. That's what this body is supposed to do. There is a process called authorization, appropriation, and oversight. And that's the process we need to follow, not circumventing that process by earmarking.

That's the purpose of this amendment. I hope that we can all agree that this is needed to ensure that this program is not earmarked in the future.

With that, Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding.

And I want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota, Madam Chairman. I could not agree more with virtually everything he has said. This is an important bill. It was brought here, and it has not been historically earmarked. That is great. We need to keep it that way. We need to keep, as he so aptly put it, Members from meddling in this. That's the purpose of this amendment, to keep Members from meddling with the formula-based program in the bill.

It was mentioned that it's unnecessary because it hasn't been historically earmarked. I suppose the same would have been said had I brought the same amendment last year to the Department of Homeland Security authorization bill or the appropriation bill because it hadn't historically been earmarked. We promised not to do that. But yet we have earmarked between $500 million and $1 billion, hundreds of

earmarks air-dropped at the last minute, never debated on the House floor, never debated, never an opportunity to amend them out. And that's what we are trying to do here is to protect this important legislation from the same fate.

It was mentioned that we have increased the authorization for money in this legislation. That is true. We did that in the FEMA grants in Homeland Security and then earmarked it. We increased it by a little and then earmarked it by a lot. It doesn't take conspiracy theorists to say that this might be happening here, that maybe this is what is going to be attempted here, to start earmarking this legislation, to get these programs that are funded by formula to instead fund Members who need protection in their re-election or who need to be rewarded in some other way. That's not how we should do business.

The purpose of this amendment is recognizing the importance of this legislation and making sure that Members don't meddle in it.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I believe that soon after this we are going to have a vote on this legislation. Again, this amendment is simply to preserve the bill as it is, to make sure that Members don't meddle in it. It is there to protect the waters and the beaches, not protect incumbents for reelection. That is what this is about.

Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Flake

Amendment No. 8: Page 3, after line 8, insert the

following:

(c) Prohibition on Earmarks.--None of the funds

appropriated pursuant to section 406(i) of such Act (33

U.S.C. 1346(i)) may be used for a Congressional earmark as

defined in clause 9(d) of rule XXI of the Rules of the House

of Representatives.

Offered By: Mr. Flake

Amendment No. 9: Page 3, line 7, strike ``$40,000,000'' and

insert ``$30,000,000''.

Offered By: Mr. Flake

Amendment No. 10: Page 10, after line 23, insert the

following:

Mr. Speaker, I voted against H.R. 3773, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which was approved by the House of Representatives on March 14, 2008. I believe that this bill was a good compromise between the RESTORE Act approved by the House on November 15, 2007 and the version of the legislation approved by the Senate on February 12, 2008. However, I opposed the version of H.R. 3773 considered in March, because it failed to include immunity for the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the administration's request to assist in intelligence collection.

I disagree with the President's decision to bypass congressional authority in authorizing such surveillance. However, I believe that the telecommunications companies were put in a difficult position and acted in a good-faith interest of national security when they cooperated with the administration's request. If Congress fails to grant them immunity, the consequences would be far-reaching.

Without immunity, the pending lawsuits against the telecom companies will carry on for years and saddle the telecoms with millions of dollars in legal fees--fees that will, in turn, be passed onto consumers.

There will he scenarios in the future when cooperation between the private sector and the Federal Government will be necessary. These situations will likely be met with distrust

and extreme hesitance on the part of private companies because we failed to come to their defense in this matter. This could be detrimental to U.S. security.

Instead of immunity, the FISA Amendments Act would allow the telecoms to defend themselves in court by lifting current restrictions and allowing classified information to be introduced as a part of their defense. This may or may not be sufficient to prove the innocence of the telecoms. but the introduction of this information would set a dangerous precedent. Over the objections of the President, highly classified information would be handed over to judges and lawyers who are unlikely to possess the appropriate and necessary security clearances. This would almost certainly make the introduction of such classified evidence in future proceedings easier, and could severely compromise our ability to collect and conduct future intelligence activities.

The initial House-approved FISA reform legislation, the RESTORE Act, did not contain any immunity provisions. I supported it with the expectation that we would consider immunity during a conference with the Senate. We voted instead on the FISA Amendments Act, which I believe is a good bill that represents a careful compromise. Immunity is critical and, because H.R. 3773 has no immunity provisions, I voted against its passage.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to say a few things about earmarks this week.

Yesterday was not a banner day for Congress. In the House, we approved a budget that had no restrictions on the contemporary practice of earmarking.

In the Senate, they turned down an amendment which would have placed a moratorium on earmarks. It went down bad. It went down 71-29.

There will come a day, and I think it will come soon, when we get rid of the contemporary practice of earmarking.

Now, many in the other body and in this body have tried to defend earmarking by saying that this is a constitutional prerogative, and somehow suggesting and even, some have said, that the Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew we were contemplating a moratorium on earmarks, as if to equate all Federal spending or Congress' power of the purse with earmarking.

There is a place for earmarking. There is a place for Congress to say to an administration, you are not adequately addressing this area; therefore, we are going to go through the process of authorization, appropriation, and oversight and tell you how we want money spent.

But that's not the contemporary practice of earmarking. The contemporary practice of earmarking is all about hiding your spending, not going through the process of authorization, appropriation and oversight, but rather to circumvent it. That's what it's all about.

When you have a bill that comes to the floor, as we did last year and the year before and the year before, several years with up to 2,500 or 3,000 earmarks in them placed just hours before the bill comes to the floor, that is not the appropriate role of Congress; that is not power of the purse that should be exercised.

That's an attempt to hide spending and to spend in a way that will benefit you politically. That is simply wrong, and I would suggest that the contemporary practice of earmarking, everybody knows it when they see it.

The difference between the proper use of an earmark and an improper use is whether or not you are attempting to hide funding, attempting to have funding slip through the cracks that nobody sees, rather than saying that we are going to authorize, then we are going to appropriate, and then we are going to have oversight.

Another myth that is often put forward is that we have to earmark because that's how we maintain control or oversight on the administration when, in truth, the contemporary practice of earmarking means that we do far less oversight. You can look at it empirically. Over the past decade, decade and a half, as we have seen a ramp-up in the area of earmarking, we have actually seen far fewer oversight hearings in the Appropriations Committee. Believe me, when you have 26,000 earmark requests a year for the Appropriations Committee in the House to deal with, you don't have time or resources or the inclination to do the proper oversight on the rest of the budget.

By earmarking, we are basically giving up our power of the purse. We are giving up our prerogative just to be able to earmark what amounts to about 1 percent of the Federal budget. We are effectively giving up control of the rest of the Federal budget. When you hear people say that we have to keep earmarking the way we are doing in order to control the Federal bureaucracy, that simply doesn't square with reality.

The contemporary practice of earmarking, as we have seen it over the past several years under Republicans and under Democrats, has been a way to hide spending for individual Members' benefits. It has led to corruption, it has led to scandal and will continue to do so until we end it.

I would encourage Members of the House and say that we are going to get

there soon enough. People across the country know that this is the wrong thing to do.

Senator McCain made the statement yesterday that there is only one town in America that doesn't understand that this is wrong, and that town is Washington, DC. Everywhere else across the country, people understand that this is a practice that has to stop.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to the budget resolution. We have received repeated warnings about Medicare and Social Security, that they are on their way to insolvency. I think we all know that. In fact, CBO recently projected that Social Security will begin to pay out more than it takes in by the year 2020, and at the same time Medicare spending will likely double over the next 10 years.

But inexplicably, this budget does nothing. It contains no action over the next 5 years to change this course. Instead, it would allow the unfunded liabilities of both of these programs to grow from almost $39 trillion today to about $52 trillion by 2013. That is a 2 to $3 trillion increase every year. This means that over the next 5 years alone,

every American household will be responsible for more than $450,000 to keep these programs functioning as is.

We can't ignore this ever-increasing, this massive problem. I have seen reports, press reports, that Medicare and Social Security aren't the priorities anymore. I would submit that, if we don't start working on a real solution, the taxpayers will quickly see either drastic cuts to their benefits or a spike in their taxes, unless we change the trend that we have.

Mr. Chairman, I am disappointed that instead of confronting this issue, we are again burying our heads in the sand. It is not realistic. We can't continue to do this. It is a huge disservice to everyone in this country. I must oppose this budget.

Also let me say, it is not just the level of spending that is problematic; it is the type of spending. We have had a lot of arguments lately about earmarking. This budget, the Democratic budget, does nothing to change the practice. Last year we had some $15 billion spent on earmarks, and a lot of those earmarks were never vetted on the House floor. In fact, the vast majority of them, 99 percent of them, were never given a thorough vetting on the House floor, and, in fact, about a billion dollars, just under a billion dollars was spent on earmarks that were air-dropped into the conference reports that never got any vetting at all, that was never subject to any House decision. That is nearly $1 billion. But what do we have in this budget to prevent that? Nothing. Nothing. We are on track to do it again or perhaps even worse.

We have got to do better, both on the level of spending and the type of spending that we are doing. In Congress, we have had a process for centuries called authorization, appropriation, and oversight, and over the past several years we have gotten away from that. Instead, we do very little authorizing, a lot of appropriating, and very, very little oversight.

There is nothing in this budget to change that process. We are doing the same. And the Democrats will say, hey, over the past several years you Republicans have done wrong as well. And we have. That is the biggest reason we are here in the minority today. But at least you could say it took Republicans awhile to get to this point. In the meantime, there were balanced budgets. There was the reformation of welfare. There were some good things that happened. Then we got fiscally lazy and we started having budgets much like this, and the voters turned us out, as I would suggest they will do to the majority party, who got into this much more quickly than Republicans did.

I hope that they change. I would like nothing more than to support a good budget here, but this is not, and I would urge my colleagues to reject it.