Dick Lugar: “the report with regard to the conferees on agriculture reform is supported by 17 out of the 18 members of our committee.…”

“the report with regard to the conferees on agriculture reform is supported by 17 out of the 18 members of our committee. I make that point because the 17 have written to our leader asking him for this debate. They are grateful for that opportunity. The 18th was predictably our colleague and a very valued member of the committee, the Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm, who objects to the conference report and has offered this recommittal motion as a way, in my judgment, of defeating the conference report. Let me just offer a word of clarification. As the chairman of the conference and one of the conferees, along with Senator Cochran and Senator Coverdell on the Republican side, we supported the conference report after meeting with House colleagues who had very considerable enthusiasms of their own. This is not the first time that the Senate and House have met in a conference and have had to wrestle with issues that were distinctly different in the bills and have come to a compromise which, in my judgment, is a sound one, which was supported immediately by all the conferees in the House and the Senate in both parties and by 74 United States Senators who have written to the majority leader supporting this conference report. They do so because it is extremely timely. There are farmers in the field now dependent upon the crop insurance provisions.”