Bob Kerrey: “first let me praise the conferees. Given the acrimony surrounding the debate, and given the lateness of the hour, it is…”

“first let me praise the conferees. Given the acrimony surrounding the debate, and given the lateness of the hour, it is entirely possible for conferees to look and produce nothing, or to produce a bill which the President would have had to veto. I appreciate very much--I know a great deal of movement had to occur in order to resolve many of the conflicts. I applaud them for having produced a piece of legislation that the President has indicated that he will sign and that he would like to revisit next year. Mr. President, I would like to go through some of the things I see are good in this bill. I do intend to vote against it, but there are a number of things that are quite good. First, in the area of conservation, one of the great success stories of farm programs over the past 60 years has been the tremendous improvement in conservation of soil and of water that has occurred on the private property in this country. Very often one of the political lines is used when describing the farm program as ``What a failure it has been.'' But one need only look at the snapshot of what this country looked like in the 1930's versus what it looks like in the 1990's. Indeed, you can go back to the 1980's and see considerable progress just in the last 10 years. It has been a great, often untold story, this success story in this country. This bill authorizes the CRP at 36.4 million acres through 2002.”