Reserving the right to object. Mr. President, I discussed this with my colleague earlier, but we are also working on a unanimous consent request. There is another amendment we might want to insert. If my friend will withhold, I think we…
Reserving the right to object.
Mr. President, I discussed this with my colleague earlier, but we are also working on a unanimous consent request. There is another amendment we might want to insert. If my friend will withhold, I think we can work this out in a discussion, and then we can propound the unanimous consent request.
Again, reserving the right to object, I, first of all, thank my colleague for working out this agreement. This is great progress. We have great time agreements. I appreciate his work in that regard.
I wish to make it clear, was it the intention of my friend to have them all in that order? Can they be in a different order when they come up or when people are here?
Further reserving the right to object, I ask my friend, he said earlier if, in fact, a Democrat comes with an amendment on this side--I don't have one right now--that they could at that time work it in. We have at least one I know we might want to call up later today.
With that, I have no objections.
That is right.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote in relation to amendment No. 3711 occur at 3:50 p.m., with the time divided 45 minutes for Senators Lugar and Lautenberg and 15 minutes in opposition, with the remaining provisions of the previous order remaining in effect.
Will the Senator yield for a question?
Is the Senator talking about his amendment on crop insurance, the one the Senator laid down the other day?
I ask the Senator if he would yield, without losing his right to the floor, for Senator Chambliss to make a unanimous consent request, at the end of which time the Senator would regain the floor.
Does that include the medical?
Mr. President, just a minute. I have now been informed there is objection on our side to including No. 3674, which has to do with the mortgage crisis.
The Finance Committee has informed me they want to take a look at this amendment on the mortgage crisis before we agree to a time.
I say to my friend from New Hampshire, there is an indication from some on our side that a couple of those amendments, Nos. 3674 and 3673, I am now informed, will both perhaps require 60 votes.
I am sorry, I didn't hear?
Madam President, reserving the right to object, but I think the Senator has a right to that--I object for the moment.
Mr. President, are we under a time limitation here?
Mr. President, I wish to thank my colleague and friend from Oregon for sponsoring this amendment. I am proud to be a cosponsor of it.
Quite frankly, this amendment brings us to where we initially started when we started talking about biomass production for biofuels. If we do it right--if we do it right--I predict that 5 years from now, by the end of the life of this farm bill, we will see cellulosic ethanol plants springing up like mushrooms all over the country--in the far west, in the Plains States, the southeastern part of the United States, all over America, using different inputs such as wood pulp, fast- growing poplars, pine, switchgrass, Buffalo grass, miscanthus, and various other species depending upon the area of the country you are from.
In order to get there, we have to merge two things. Right now, I say to my friend from Oregon, we have a classic chicken-and-egg situation. You can't get investors to invest in biorefineries for cellulose because they ask a very important question: Where is the feedstock? Well, then you go to farmers and say, we would like you to grow biomass for cellulosic ethanol, and they ask a very important question: Where is the market? So on the one hand you have investors saying where is the feedstock, and then the farmers saying where is the market, and we have to get these two together.
Well, in the farm bill before us--and my friend knows this very well--we have very good provisions for loan guarantees for biorefineries. So on the investor end, I think we have done a really good job with this bill of looking at that. On the other end, providing the transition payments and support to farmers to grow biomass feedstocks, this amendment fills in that gap. This says to farmers: Look, you can go ahead and transition some of your land to producing biomass crops, such as perennials, and you can do it without having a long-term financial commitment to a biorefinery, and you can do it by adhering to conservation goals.
Now, that is the other part of this amendment that is so important. What this amendment basically says is: Look, we will be glad to give you--an individual farmer--financial support for establishment. Because if you are going to transition from row crops to perennials for biomass production, that may cost some money. You may have to buy some new equipment or change your practices or that type of thing. Maybe you have to separate out a certain section of your land. Well, that is a transition cost, and this provides for 50 percent matching money for those transition costs.
The other thing is to provide for a rental payment, a rental payment to a farmer to make up the revenues lost on the land while the crop is being established. For example, if you have a row crop or something now, but you want to, say, take a certain part of your land and you would like to start growing biomass, well, your income from that will probably be a little less for the first few years. So what the Wyden amendment does is it provides for a rental payment for that period of time.
The other key thing is it provides for a preference for enrollment in the Conservation Stewardship Program. Now, again, in order to get this, the contract the farmer would sign would require them to limit their plantings to noninvasive species, enroll only land that was previously used for agricultural purposes, potentially including grazing and CRP lands. In other words, you couldn't take lands out of the WRP program or that type of thing. You have to meet the stewardship threshold of the CSP program by the end of the contract period, and you have to limit the harvest of your biomass crops to time periods outside the major brooding and nesting season for wildlife and avian species in your area.
So again, this is a very good amendment, I say to my friend from Oregon. It is very well thought out and very well tailored. And the Senator from Oregon is absolutely right, we have a lot of groups supporting this amendment. I may be repeating what the Senator said--I didn't hear all of his remarks--but we have a letter here from the National Wildlife Federation that includes 94 different groups that support the Wyden amendment, everything from the American Corn Growers to the Audubon Society, the Center for Rural Affairs, Defenders of Wildlife--basically, a lot of wildlife groups all over this country supporting this amendment.
Did the Senator ask consent to put those in the Record?
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter and the signatories of the groups from the National Wildlife Federation supporting the Wyden amendment.
Mr. President, I also have a letter here, also from a coalition of conservation organizations, the American Sport Fishing Association, Ducks Unlimited, Izaak Walton League of America, Pheasants Forever, Quail Forever, Trout Unlimited, and again a number of groups supporting the Wyden amendment. So I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter and the signatories thereto.
Lastly, the National Association of Wheat Growers and IOGEN Corporation together have sent a letter in support of the Wyden amendment. I ask unanimous consent the letter be printed in the Record.
Again, this amendment is broadly supported. This is an amendment that is good for the entire country, not just Oregon but also for Iowa, for the plains States, and for the southeastern part of the United States. This is good for America. This is good for our farmers.
It will get us moving on the right path toward biomass production, and at the same time protecting our environment, protecting our wildlife habitats, and making sure that cellulosic ethanol from biomass gets a firm foothold, as I said, within the life of this farm bill. Probably by the end of this farm bill, as I said, if we do it right-- and the Wyden amendment is the amendment that makes sure we do it right--then we will see the cellulosic plants springing up all over the country. We will have better wildlife, we will have more ducks, more pheasants, more geese. We will have more hunting grounds for hunters and fishermen. We will have better and cleaner water. We will have the energy we need in America growing in this country.
I applaud the Senator from Oregon. It is a very thoughtful amendment, very farsighted, very meaningful, and I hope we can adopt it overwhelmingly.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and I have an amendment that I send to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.
I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.
Mr. President, it looks as though we are wrapping up here for the day. I do not know of other speakers who want to come to the floor.
We are now working, I might inform fellow Senators, on a unanimous consent agreement that we hope to propound shortly that will set up some votes for tomorrow, I think hopefully about five votes that have been agreed upon. We are working on the consent to get those lined up right now so we can have those first thing tomorrow.
Quite frankly, I am very optimistic. I thank all of the Senators who came here today, debated their amendments. I thank the ranking member, Senator Chambliss. We have been working together on this. If we get these amendments agreed to, to dispose of them early tomorrow, and then work through other amendments tomorrow--hopefully we can work a little bit later than perhaps we did today--I can see that we can have a lot of votes tomorrow.
We have two or three amendments on the farm bill that we, by mutual agreement, were going to bring up on Thursday. The end may be in sight. The end actually may be in sight on this farm bill. I am hopeful this week, if we continue on the pace we are going, we can do that.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent on the amendment I just placed at the desk to add Senator Gregg as an original cosponsor.
Mr. President, I take this opportunity to say a few words about a couple of amendments that are offered and are pending that we may have votes on tomorrow.
Amendment No. 3553
First, the Alexander amendment No. 3553 that the Senator from Tennessee discussed earlier. The tax package that was added to the farm bill includes a small wind tax credit of up to 30 percent, or $4,000, for small wind turbines installed at a residence or a business. A small wind turbine is one with generation capacity of less than 100 kilowatts. The amendment offered by the Senator from Tennessee, amendment 3553, would limit the eligibility of this to only wind turbines installed on farms or at a rural small business.
Well, you might say: What is wrong with that? At first blush that sounds all right, except that we have new technologies coming on line, small wind turbines that are very effective, cost effective, that will be used on farms, will be used at some small businesses. But I can also see some of them being used for plain old residences. They may be rural, they may be in rural areas, but they would be on farms. They may not be a business or a farm, but they will be rural residences. They ought to be allowed also to have access to this.
I think the amendment unduly restricts the number of people who can be eligible for purchasing these small wind turbines. Also, it says ``a rural small business.'' Well, a rural small business has a rather definite definition, a restricted definition. So there may be a lot of small businesses that would want to put up a wind turbine for their small business, but they may not be classified as a rural small business.
It could be in a small town, it could be in the suburbs, it could be in metropolitan areas, but they are on the outskirts of a metropolitan area, but they may not be listed as a ``rural small business.'' So why would we want to say to a small business that might be in a rural area, classified in a rural area, but 10 miles away, you would have a small business that might not be classified as rural, but they would not be eligible for it even though they could use and would be inclined to construct or buy a small wind turbine?
Again, I think we want to keep the amendment open to a broader population. It means more wind power installations, more clean and renewable power. Again, the Senator from Tennessee is probably correct, and the majority of these may well, I hope, be put in rural areas, on farms, or at rural businesses. But why would we want to restrict that if we want clean, renewable energy in this country? We want to get off the oil pipeline.
It would seem to me we would continue to encourage this wherever we could. I think the Finance Committee had it right. They had it right, and they drafted it right. I hope we will keep the amendment as written and defeat this Alexander amendment on wind power.
Amendment No. 3551
Again, Senator Alexander also has an amendment No. 3551, much along the same lines. Right now, rural landowners receive an easement payment when electric transmission lines are sited on their property.
Well, the Finance tax package in the farm bill includes a section which would allow property owners to exclude these easement payments from their gross income when calculating their tax payments if the transmission property meets certain requirements, including high voltage and used primarily to transmit renewable energy.
Again, do we not want to encourage renewable energy? Do we want to get off the pipeline? We want to encourage rural landowners to be more prone to let a transmission line be constructed across their property if it is renewable electricity.
That is what the amendment does. It allows them to exclude the easement payment if it meets the voltage and renewable use requirements. So, again, this is another small thing to do to help encourage the development of wind power and wind farms or solar energy or geothermal energy; it could be any of those.
Since a lot of these will be located in rural areas, they are going to need to build transmission lines across the farms in rural areas, so the Finance Committee added this to the farm bill. It can help support transmission access development for renewable energy and expand and modernize the transmission grid, and benefit consumers nationwide by bringing down the cost of renewable electricity. But it is often the farmers and ranchers who see the actual infrastructure on their property. This is, again, another way of encouraging, as rapidly as possible, the building of more renewable energy systems in the country.
Amendment No. 3671
Lastly, Mr. President, Senator Gregg today offered amendment No. 3671 to strike the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network from the farm bill.
I listened a little bit to what the Senator had to say. I want to make it very clear for the record that this is not a mandatory program. This is only an authorization. It is fully discretionary. It is up to, of course, the Agriculture Appropriations Committee to appropriate money for it. Senator Grassley, and a lot of other members are supportive of this provision. The Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network provision is a bipartisan part of the farm bill. We included it to respond to an increase in the incidences of psychological distress and suicide in rural areas.
Farmers and rural residents often lack affordable health insurance, and they lack any close proximity to any mental health treatment services. So this program we included would provide telephone help lines, Web sites, support groups, outreach services to farmers, ranchers and rural residents who need this help.
Again, it is an authorization only. There are no mandatory funds. I find it odd this provision is singled out when there are no mandatory funds involved. Farmers increasingly face a lot of stress. They have no control over many factors such as drought, blizzards, floods, ice storms, as we are having in Iowa right now, financial difficulties beyond their control, foreign markets, imports, disease, different things that happen. A lot of times farmers have no control over these. It can be compounded if a farmer or rancher has some poor physical health problems, in addition, and they lack insurance coverage. So again, it is trying to establish some rural help lines so a farmer out there, rancher out there who feels stressed might want to call and seek some help and assistance.
Farmers and ranchers pride themselves on being rugged individuals. That they are. But that doesn't mean they are not subject to stress. That doesn't mean they don't commit suicide. They do. That doesn't mean they sometimes get so stressed out they act out in violent ways. It happens to the best of people and the most rugged of individuals. I have been approached--I am sure others have--by a lot of farm groups asking that we do something more to assist farmers and farm families who have had stresses. That was why we set up the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network. It had never been done before. We wanted to test it out and see if it might work and might help save a few lives, keep a few families together, cut down on spousal abuse, cut down on maybe even some child abuse in some cases. It is a good part of the farm bill. I hope Senators will oppose the Gregg amendment and keep the rural stress assistance network as part of the farm bill.
I yield the floor.