Tom Harkin: “I will speak a little bit now on this amendment and what it pertains to, but I am offering this on behalf of Senator…”

“I will speak a little bit now on this amendment and what it pertains to, but I am offering this on behalf of Senator Grassley, my colleague from Iowa. This is an amendment to the Craig amendment. Senator Grassley, unavoidably, could not be here today. He has to be back in the State of Iowa. But, obviously, we will not be voting on this until next week anyway. But we wanted to lay this down today. I am going to take the time now just to talk a little bit about this amendment and what it does. And then, of course, my colleague, Senator Grassley, will further elaborate on this when he returns after the weekend. As my colleague from Idaho, Senator Craig, mentioned yesterday, there has been a great amount of hype surrounding Senator Johnson's amendment that bans packer ownership. I cosponsored that amendment. The chief cosponsor, of course, was Senator Grassley from Iowa. Now, Senator Craig wants to replace the Johnson amendment which was adopted in the Senate, with a study because Senator Craig says he has some concerns about how the Johnson amendment will work. The basic concern--as I understand it, and as I listened to the speech last night and have read the Record--is over the word, ``control''; that somehow there is a confusion about ``control'' and whether ``control'' would prohibit any kind of contracting relationships that a packer might have with a producer.”