Harry Reid

From the Senate floor yesterday (via the Nov. 5 Congressional Record) Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, while acknowledging there could be more reform in the farm bill, suggests a super majority of support for the bill as it stands. He also says there will be no "open amendment process" for fear of bogging down the bill. That makes the future cloudy on AgJobs and transfer of AQI back to USDA, I would say.


THE FARM BILL
The farm bill. Chairman HARKIN, Senator BAUCUS, and Ranking Members CHAMBLISS and GRASSLEY deserve a lot of credit for working among their caucuses to write the bill we are debating this week. In the 24 years I have been in the Congress, first in the House and now in the Senate—actually, 25 years—no farm bill has embodied as much reform as this one. There are some who say this bill doesn’t go far enough in the direction of reform. To those critics, it should be clear there will be an opportunity for Senators to offer amendments during debate. Would I personally like more reform? Of course I would. But I would like to focus on the positive and forward-looking elements that lie at the heart of this bill. This bill saves billions of dollars by reforming existing programs, which allows new investment to expand food and nutrition pograms for families, the elderly, and the disabled, as well as an expansion of the fresh fruits and vegetables programs to all 50 States to improve the health and wellness of America’s children. It invests more than $4 billion in conservation programs to protect wetlands, grasslands, and working farms. More than 60 percent of this bill is simply nutrition programs. This bill takes us a step closer to the vital goal of energy independence, with more than $1 billion for programs that are environmentally responsible whilegrowing the farming economy. We import about 70 percent of our oil. We don’t import 70 percent of our food. One reason we don’t is because we have farm programs that work. Could they be made better? Of course they could be. But this bill does do some extremely important things. It responds to the urgent need for permanent disaster assistance, which will help farmers respond and recover from future unavoidable disasters. It invests about $2 billion in specialtycrops. What are specialty crops? Strawberries,apples, and those programs that are so important to our country, so that it stops us from having to import as much as we would have to if we didn’t have these programs. But with weather changes, some of these farmers have had tremendous losses from which they have not been able to recover. It offers a reasonable compromise on country-of-origin labeling, and it improves competition in the livestock industry. There will be a number of amendments offered during the floor debate. Senators DORGAN and GRASSLEY will offer an amendment on payment limits. Senators LAUTENBERG and LUGAR will offer an alternative farm bill amendment. Senator MCCONNELL and I understand these amendments are important to Members on both sides of the aisle, and we will work together to ensure ample time is given for consideration. I am confident and hopeful that this process will result in a truly bipartisan bill which will support our agricultural communities, promote a cleaner environment, and grow our economy. But I do say and alert everybody to this fact: We have had a really good legislative session. Once we get to a bill, we have basically offered amendments on most every bill. I think this bill is going to have trouble with that. We have to complete our work by next Friday, so we will make sure the amendments correctly relate to this bill and everybody will have an opportunity to offer those. We will do our very best to see that is the case. But this bill is a tax bill, and there could be a lot of mischievous amendments offered if it were an open amendment process. I think, with it being late in this year’s session of Congress, everyone understands we can’t do that. We have work we must complete. The farm bill is a very bipartisan bill. I think we could seek cloture on the bill right now and probably do a pretty good job because it is really a bipartisan bill. I don’t want to have to do it now, but I do want everyone to know we are not going to have an open amendment process, and I have explained that to the Republican leader.