Byron Dorgan: “that distinction is obviously lost on people who are out there planting barley and who signed up for a program in which…”

“that distinction is obviously lost on people who are out there planting barley and who signed up for a program in which they felt they were going to get a 46-cent-per-bushel payment because they were promised that. Then it turns out there was a miscalculation determined by USDA in the process of constructing this farm bill, which results in a 30-percent reduction in the payment they expected. Now, the Senator from Arkansas is generous, and I appreciate working with him. But he knows, and I know, that we may not have another opportunity to correct this. It seems to me that while one can make the case that this is an authorizing committee issue, one can also make the case that this is an appropriations issue, because the Secretary of Agriculture needs to have the money in order to restore this payment that was promised to family farmers. This is not a circumstance where there is confusion about what the promise was. The Freedom To Farm Act made specific representations about, if you planted a certain commodity, what kind of payment you would receive for that planting. In the case of barley, there is no confusion. The promise was 46 cents a bushel. Now we are told, for those who fuel up the tractor and plant barley seeds, the thing has changed, the deal is off, there is a 30-percent reduction. That just, I say to my colleagues, is not satisfactory to me. I do not think it is satisfactory to the farmers who believe that we ought to keep our word on this.”