Ron Kind: “Mr. Speaker, this is a very simple motion. I understand we are in the waning, perhaps minutes of conclusion of the farm…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is a very simple motion. I understand we are in the waning, perhaps minutes of conclusion of the farm bill. But, nevertheless, I think it's important that we get the policies right. We do need a farm bill. We need it as soon as possible. It's planting season back home. Our farmers need some predictability. They need to know what rules they are being to be operating under, one way or another. But we need a good farm bill, not a bad farm bill; one that tries to get the policy right, not the wrong way. I still believe there's more room for reform under the commodity programs in light of record high commodity prices. It's tough to justify to the average taxpayer that what is still being considered under the current farm bill is close to $25 billion of direct payments to go out over the next 5 years, bearing no relationship to price or production. It's not a safety net. These are entitlement funding, automatic payments that go to large producers, primarily merely due to their existence and not because of market. But there's another important feature of this farm bill and that is the conservation title. This farm bill offers this Nation the greatest public investment in private land ownership in regards to anything else we do around here.”