Providing for Consideration of Conference Report on S. Con. Res. 21, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2008

Floor Speech

PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF CONFERENCE REPORT ON S. CON. RES. 21, CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 -- (House of Representatives - May 17, 2007)

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Mr. MORAN of Kansas. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be on the House floor today to raise a significant concern I have with the budget proposal that will be before the House of Representatives this week before its final passage.

At the moment, as we speak here on the House floor, Republican and Democrat members of the House Agriculture Committee are gathered in the House Agriculture Committee room to talk about a plan for a new 2002 farm bill. As we gather together, it's a wonderful thing that those of us who care about the farmers and ranchers of the country, who care about the environmental and conservation needs, who care about the food and nutrition needs of Americans, have decided we want to craft a farm bill together. We want to work side-by-side to reach the right priorities within the farm bill.

The problem is the budget priorities established under this budget are inadequate to provide a safety net for the farmers of America. There is a ruse going on here. The budget provides for a $20 billion reserve fund that the farm bill can access in the process of developing a new farm bill, but only if we cut spending someplace else, or we raise taxes.

So we are sitting in the Agriculture Committee trying to determine how do we meet the needs of the agriculture producers and the consumers of America, how do we meet the land and environmental and conservation needs of the people of our cities and our countryside, and we are going to try to determine that in a vacuum that suggests there is actually $20 billion in the budget that's not there.

It is simply a gimmick to allow us to try to write a farm bill to appeal to all the variety of interests that care about the outcome of this farm bill debate. But the money is not available.

For too long we have had the gimmicks in the budgetary process. To me,
this is one of the biggest I have seen in my time in Congress in which we pretend there is a fund to draft farm bill legislation.

The farmers of America, certainly the farmers of Kansas, struggle today. We are in perhaps the beginning of an end of a 6-year drought. Commodity prices are higher. The last farm bill, 2002 farm bill, spent $18 billion less than was expected. But do we get the advantage of that in agriculture spending? The answer is no. It's taken away from us because commodity prices at the moment are higher than they were. But we know, in agriculture, we know the laws of supply and demand and economic rules that govern our economy, that the result of higher commodity prices is lower commodity prices.

So as we draft a farm bill, we are going to pretend there's money there to meet the safety net needs of farmers when it's not there. Commodity prices will be lower. That's a natural result of higher commodity prices.

Conservation environmental needs will be greater. Food stamps and nutrition programs will need to be funded. Yet, this budget fails to meet those needs. Even the administration's proposal had a better offer for American agriculture than the Democrat-passed budget on the House floor today.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, there is talk about higher commodity prices for our farmers, but very few people talk about the purpose of the farm bill, which is to provide a safety net when the cost of production to produce the crop is higher than the commodity price that the farmer receives. Yes, commodity prices are higher this year than they were last year or the year before, but let me remind people of this body what has happened to the input costs that a farmer, in fact, all Americans, face.

Agriculture is an energy dependent business, with the increasing cost of fuel, fertilizer and natural gas, the price, the cost of producing agricultural commodities in this country has skyrocketed since the 2002 farm bill. Yet the budget that we are presented with today will allow us to do less for farmers, not more.

I rise just to raise serious objection to the budget, and to make my colleagues aware, as we work together in a bipartisan fashion in the Agriculture Committee, to craft a farm bill, the parameters that have been laid out by the budget make that process almost impossible to accomplish.

I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding me the time. Again, I rise to oppose this budget and its failure to meet the agricultural, environmental and food safety needs of Americans.

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