Dick Lugar: “I argue against the Harkin amendment on the basis that the limits that were set in the Lugar-Leahy bill were based upon…”

“I argue against the Harkin amendment on the basis that the limits that were set in the Lugar-Leahy bill were based upon the herds in 1970. They correspond to the Clean Water Act considerations of that time, and they made sense at that time. Unhappily or happily, as the case may be, people in cattle, with hog farms, with chickens, and with turkeys, have a great number. We have made a limit of $10,000 per operation, but in meetings with producers all over the country, pragmatically the limits that we have come to seem to be a compromise between the large and the small. I visited the Iowa Corn Producers last week and they feel that is about the right level. We had the big and the small, and a great controversy was witnessed in that State. There is no magic in the figures. They seem to me to be a practical compromise. I advocate the committee text be retained and the Harkin amendment be defeated.”