Roy Blunt: “I am pleased to join Senator Kohl in supporting the conference report, and I particularly want to talk about the…”

“I am pleased to join Senator Kohl in supporting the conference report, and I particularly want to talk about the agricultural programs in the report. This is my first year as the ranking member of the agriculture subcommittee, and I have certainly enjoyed working with the chairman. He has been generous and kind to me, including me in many of these discussions. In these days, it is no small feat for an appropriations bill to get through the Senate in what is pretty close to regular order, and so I am glad we were able to work closely together to get that done. I hope we can do the same thing next year and have hearings and floor time to pass the Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA bill again next year and maybe in a way that is even closer to the timing and the order we would like to see. The conference report we are considering today reminds us that we can and should return to the regular way of doing business on appropriations bills. Even though the conference report includes three separate bills, they were all vigorously debated on the floor, and more than two dozen amendments were accepted. The process has certainly yielded a better outcome than a large omnibus appropriations bill would have. The chairman has reviewed the details of the Agriculture bill, so I will touch on only a few of the highlights. Discretionary spending for agriculture programs is $350 million below the fiscal year 2011 level and significantly below the fiscal year 2010 level.…”