Dick Lugar: “I will vote for the 1999 agriculture appropriations conference report. Unfortunately, several unwise provisions have…”

“I will vote for the 1999 agriculture appropriations conference report. Unfortunately, several unwise provisions have been added since this bill passed the Senate. The cumulative weight of these mistaken policies does not outweigh the many good things in the bill, but is still reason for substantial concern. The bill is commendable in many ways. The conferees wisely rejected efforts to increase price support loan rates. Instead, they expanded disaster assistance from $500 million in the Senate bill to $2.35 billion. This aid will benefit farmers with 1998 losses as well as producers in some regions who have suffered several consecutive years of loss because of weather or disease. The bill also provides $1.65 billion in market loss payments to farmers. These payments provide income support without doing violence to the basic structure of the 1996 FAIR Act. In preserving the FAIR Act's 'freedom to farm,' the market loss payments are clearly superior to the higher loan rates preferred by our Democratic colleagues. Raising loan rates, according to the non-partisan Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, would cause more production, higher surplus stocks and lower prices and incomes in future years. Even though higher loan rates might raise prices in the short term, they would have deleterious effects that would plague U.S. agriculture for years to come.”