Dick Lugar: “I suppose my query is just this: You are correct, we have had all these annual situations since the 1996 legislation.…”

“I suppose my query is just this: You are correct, we have had all these annual situations since the 1996 legislation. But in this particular year, the Secretary of Agriculture, at the time we were debating the emergency in August, pointed out the net farm cash income was $61 billion. And this is historically an all-time high in terms of income in the country. It was higher than last year, but the last year was more than the year before that. In essence, even in the face of much higher net farm cash income, we have been reappearing. The safety net under the bill we now have, of course, was these AMTA payments. These were the fixed payments that went to farmers regardless of what else happened. They were to diminish after 7 years, and have been heading down from, say, $5 billion of Federal expenditures into the $4 billion range, and so forth, each year, and then the loan deficiency payments, at least for certain of our rural crops. For example, in my State $1.89 for corn is the loan deficiency payment level, which means you have $1.89 regardless of what the market price is, however low it may be recorded. At the time, admittedly, $1.89 seemed like a price that would not be approached as frequently as it now is. During harvest time, we are regularly below $1.89 in terms of people coming into the elevator at that point. So this has led to much greater Federal Government expenditures; $6 billion, I think, last year to loan deficiency, and not just for corn but for other crops.”