Tom Harkin: “first of all, I compliment and thank my colleague from North Dakota for crafting this new proposal and for all of his…”

“first of all, I compliment and thank my colleague from North Dakota for crafting this new proposal and for all of his hard work on behalf of farmers and ranchers all over this country. Senator Dorgan has, indeed, been a leader in this Senate in focusing attention on the fact that so many of our farmers and ranchers are in dire straits, and that we need a substantial package of relief and help to get them through this winter and into next year. What Senator Dorgan has now sent to the desk is, hopefully, a reaching out to our colleagues and friends on the Republican side to join us in this effort. The proposal we had yesterday that I had offered was $10.7 billion. This is now $1 billion less. So we have come down $1 billion. We have taken some money out of places which, quite frankly, this Senator thinks is going to be hard to explain to some farmers. But in order to try to reach an agreement with our colleagues on the other side, for at least a meaningful package, Senator Dorgan and I and others have crafted this new package that is $1 billion less than what we offered yesterday. This may, indeed, be the Senate's last chance to vote on a meaningful package of support for our farmers and ranchers. Again, the amounts that are in this package are pretty close to the minimum of what we are going to need. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why we have the proposal again before us that, as I understand it, is about $400 million more than what it was yesterday.”