September 8, 1977
Page 28188
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I take it that neither the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee nor I have further requests for time. I did not expect requests for time. I have had no requests for time. I may well be the only Senator on this side of the issue. In any case, I have no requests for time. I intend to take only 3 or 4 minutes for summation, and then I will yield back the remainder of my time, unless I unexpectedly receive a request for time.
Mr. TALMADGE. I have 3 or 4 minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I yield myself 3 minutes. I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I see no need to repeat the record of what has led to this amendment or the rationale for the numbers in the second budget resolution as presented by the Budget Committee. But I do want to make this point clear:
The second concurrent resolution was approved by the Budget Committee and reported to the Senate just prior to the August recess. The reason this amendment is pending before us is threefold. Since the Budget Committee's agreement, the following three events have occurred:
First, the conference report on S. 275 was agreed to by the Agriculture Committee 1 day after the second budget resolution was reported. It would cost $1.6 billion over existing law. The law has been changed, compared to the Budget Committee's allowance of $900 million. That is the difference of $700 million about which we are talking. It has nothing to do with weather, except insofar as weather and the farmers' problems motivated the committee to do this. It was not the automatic result of current law. It was a change in current law.
Second, the administration has administratively raised price supports for feed grains to the level provided for in the conference report and provided a set aside for wheat lower than was calculated in the formation of the budget resolution. The combination of these two administrative actions has raised the estimated cost of existing law by $600 million.
Third, the USDA has reestimated the yield of the current harvest, producing an increase in the estimated cost of price support programs under existing law of $100 million. That reestimate, of course, does reflect weather conditions that change the crop estimates. The last two of these reasons could have been accommodated by the second budget resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator has expired.
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield myself 1 additional minute.
The last two of these reasons could have been accommodated by the second budget resolution if the first event had not taken place, or the first event could have been accommodated if the last two had not taken place. However, to suggest that the reason for the increase is wholly the result of the third condition or third factor is to ignore the first two.
In summation, I think the RECORD should include that record of what has taken place since the Budget Committee reported the resolution just prior to the recess.
With that, Mr. President, I think the record is complete, from my point of view, and I will yield back the remainder of my time when the distinguished Senator from Georgia has completed his summation.
Mr. TALMADGE. Mr. President, first, I pay my respects and very high tribute to the distinguished Senator from Maine, who is chairman of the Budget Committee. In my opinion, he has done an outstanding job in that capacity.
I find myself voting with him far more often than I find myself voting against him, but in this particular instance, he happens to be wrong. [Laughter.] I hope a majority of the Senate will happen to be right.
I also pay my tribute to the distinguished ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on the Budget, the Senator from Oklahoma, who serves not only on the Budget Committee but also serves with distinction on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. The Senator from Oklahoma is a man who farms for a living. He still farms. He knows the vagaries of farming to a very high degree. He has been an outstanding member of our Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. He has been an outstanding member of the Committee on the Budget. I believe that his speech this morning on the floor of the Senate is worthy of high consideration. I hope that this will mean that we can consider the matter of agriculture on more than an annual basis.
As has been pointed out this morning by virtually every Senator who spoke in favor of the amendment pending at the desk, no one on the face of the Earth can predict the weather. The weatherman who reports the weather for today is as wrong as often as he is right. How can you expect anyone to predict the weather for the entire United States during an annual growing season? It is an utter impossibility. If they cannot predict the weather for the United States, how can they be expected to predict the weather in the Soviet Union, in Europe, in China, in Afghanistan,in Patagonia? Weather determines to a greater degree than anything else the production yields worldwide.
For 2 or 3 consecutive years, we have had favorable growing weather, not onlyin the United States but worldwide as well. Even Bangladesh at the present time has adequate grain reserves. India at the present time has a surplus of grain reserves.
So, what is the situation? The reserves of wheat are the highest of any time in the history of mankind. What has that done? It has driven the price of wheat down to 40 percent of parity. Wheat farmers throughout America are going broke. Many farms are being foreclosed, particularly those of young farmers who have overexpanded, without a great deal of equity in their farms or their machinery.
In the United States we have had the second largest corn crop in the history of mankind. The second largest soybean crop in the history of the United States is predicted for this year. That has driven farm prices down, while yields have gone up. The demand worldwide has gone down, and that has driven prices down. That is why we now need some legislation to protect the farmers of this country. They are in worse shape now than they have been at any time since the depression days of 1933, and we remember what happened during those years. A book was written about the Okies migrating to the West — The Grapes of Wrath. That is a situation we see in many parts of America today.
In my State, we have had the worst drought in the history of Georgia. The estimated loss about 7 weeks ago was $700 million — in 1 year.
In other areas of the country, we have had severe drought. However, in most areas of the country we have had good weather conditions, which have caused the largest yields in the history of our Republic.
Much has been mentioned today about the budget and the sanctity of the budget.
Mr. MAGNUSON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. TALMADGE. I yield.
Mr. MAGNUSON. Mr. President, I am going to vote for the Senator's amendment. I have not had an opportunity to discuss this amendment, as I just returned from my home State. I see the Senator from Idaho in the Chamber.
Despite all the conditions about which the Senator from Georgia has talked, in our area I think we have had the worst drought conditions in our history, particularly with respect to wheat and pea farmers.
The crop is down by as much as 50 to 40 percent, and they are really going broke. Without a bill like this — I would like to see the bill even better, in better shape than what it is.
Mr. TALMADGE. May I say to the distinguished Senator that most farmers have complained bitterly that it is inadequate.
Mr. MAGNUSON. This is absolutely the minimum these farmers can get along with. I do not know if they will survive even with this minimum. But if we do not do this, we are going to have more young people leave the farms, more bankruptcies, machinery prices up. Just last week I was in our area, may I say to the Senator from Idaho, all through there, and I never realized how bad the situation was because of this drought. It has rained a little. One of the days I was there it rained, and I had a little joke, I took credit for it. I took credit for the rain. But it was hardly enough to plant the winter wheat. So that is why the job the Committee on Agriculture has done is very, very important.
I know the argument the Senator had on the House side, but I am glad to be here now to be able to vote for it.
Mr. TALMADGE. I thank my distinguished friend from Washington for his comment and his support.
I yield now to my distinguished friend from Idaho.
Mr. McCLURE. I thank my friend from Georgia for yielding.
I want to second what the Senator from Washington just said. Eastern Washington and northern Idaho have been in the worst shape they have been in any kind of recorded history in the memory of man.
The eastern Palouse along the edge of Idaho and Washington, in that area the crops were 30 percent of normal or below, and I wish it were possible for us to extend to them some financing
Mr. MAGNUSON. If the wheat farmer got up to 50, he would consider himself a very lucky person out there.
Mr. McCLURE. He would be very luckybecause he would have more than the normal for that area this year.
Interim financing may be more important to those farmers than any other kind of a loan program on crops produced because he has nothing to put under loan, and the result is that as important as this legislation is, there is work yet to be done for some of those people. But I certainly support the statements that have been made, and I support the amendment.
Mr. TALMADGE. I thank my distinguished friend from Idaho.
Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia has 4 minutes remaining.
Mr. TALMADGE. I thank the Chair.
Now, Mr. President, much has been said about the budget, and I support a balanced budget. In fact, I have offered a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget, and I wish the Senate would agree to it.
But let us see what has been happening now to the budget in recent years. I hold in my hand the budget of the Government of the United States for 1978. Let us look at agriculture. Farm income stabilization in 1969 cost the U.S. taxpayers $5.304 billion. It has been going down, down, down ever since. In 1976 it cost the taxpayers of the United States $1.574 billion.
I ask unanimous consent that that table (Budget Outlays by Function, 1969-79) from the budget for fiscal year 1978 be included in the RECORD at this point, Mr. President.
There being no objection, the table wasordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
[Table omitted]
Mr. TALMADGE. Now, let us look at some other functions of Government found on table 19.
Let us look at function 600, income security. In 1969 that cost the taxpayers $37,281 million. By 1975, Mr. President, that had increased to $127,406 million, an increase of nearly fourfold in a period of 8 years.
Let us look at some other items now. Total health 1969. That figure was $11,758 million. By 1975, just 6 years later, it was $33,448 million, an increase of almost 300 percent in 8 years.
So while these other functions of Government, are going up, the cost of agriculture has been going down, down, down. Every other item of Government, every other expenditure of Government, has been going up, up, up.
So, Mr. President, this is one time we are asking for the expenditure for agriculture to be increased. The only reason we are asking there be an increase instead of a decrease — and I have been chairman of the Committee on Agriculture now for about 6 years, and every year under my chairmanship the cost of agriculture has been going down because we have had favorable markets overseas, and now we do not have those favorable markets. We have huge surpluses, we have price declines, we have farmers in need. We have wheat farmers at 40 percent of parity; grain farmers at 48 percent of parity; other farmers who are producing commodities below the cost of production.
So I hope, Mr. President, the Senate will agree to the amendment by an overwhelming majority.
I yield back the remainder of my time.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I would just like to take 2 minutes to make an observation, if I may, and then I will yield back the remainder of my time.
I would like to point out to the distinguished Senator from Georgia that if his constitutional amendment requiring abalanced budget were in effect, his amendment would be out of order unless we could find a way to cut $64.7 billion from other functions of the budget. If we were to do that, we would produce other deficits which would require a mandate for other cuts.
So we have to choose between that kind of mandated budget discipline or the kind of discipline which forces upon us the responsibility of choosing between good programs. Otherwise we are going to be out of balance.
The Senator has correctly pointed to the growth in income security functions. The biggest single item is that, as the Senator knows as a member of the Committee on Finance, is social security.
That presumably benefits people on the farm as well as people in the cities. So social security payments are payments made under a formula mandated by law. It is not anything we can control. We cannot cut that to make funds available for the agriculture function.
The health function has grown largely under the leadership of the distinguished Senator from Washington (Mr. MAGNUSON) who has been one of the most articulate spokesmen for increased health expenditures in the interests of the American people, and he has made an eloquent, persuasive and justified case for those increases.
But the net result, gentlemen, is we cannot rob Peter to pay Paul. We must somehow apply the discipline across the board. It is only in that spirit that I have made the case I have tried to make today.