Pelosi: Landmark Farm Bill Ensures Future Farm Bills Will Never Again Look Like Those of the Past

Pelosi: Landmark Farm Bill Ensures Future Farm Bills Will Never Again Look Like Those of the Past

Friday, July 27, 2007

Contact: Brendan Daly/Nadeam Elshami, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke on the House floor this morning expressing her support for H.R. 2419, the Farm, Nutrition, and Bioenergy Act of 2007. Below are her remarks as prepared:

â€Å"Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I want to begin by thanking our Agriculture Committee chairman, Collin Peterson.

â€Å"Chairman Peterson and our colleagues on the Agriculture Committee have done a masterful job. The result of their work is a bipartisan farm bill that enjoys the support of the American Farm Bureau, the National Farmers Union, and a wide array of conservation and nutrition groups.

â€Å"This farm bill enjoys broad, bipartisan support because it meets its primary responsibility â€" providing an effective farm safety net â€" while also reforming America’s farm policy, investing in energy independence, supporting conservation, and strengthening nutrition assistance. It takes America’s farm policy in a New Direction that stands with our farmers and ranchers and recognizes their vital role of providing food, fiber, and fuel for America and the world.

â€Å"I am proud of the legislation that Chairman Peterson has produced, and particularly his willingness to be bold in the area of energy independence.

â€Å"The 2007 farm bill encourages the production of biofuels, not only from corn, but from a variety of crops. It boosts our investment in renewable energy by 600 percent and provides loan guarantees for the development of refineries that process renewable fuels. These are just two steps that will ensure that we send our energy dollars to the Midwest and across America, instead of the Middle East, and create good paying jobs here at home.

â€Å"Energy independence is a national security issue, it is an environmental issue, and it is an economic issue for our nation and America’s families. Thanks to this farm bill, it will also be an economic solution for America’s farmers. It will create a rural renaissance that will re-energize farm country and create jobs in small towns across America.

â€Å"The New Direction farm bill also recognizes that those who work the land â€" America’s farmers and ranchers â€" are the best stewards of the land.

â€Å"In the area of conservation, the bill improves access to, and funding for, initiatives that take environmentally sensitive lands out of production. It encourages environmentally friendly practices on working lands. And it will invest 30 percent more to preserve farm and ranchland, improve water quality, enhance soil conservation, air quality, and wildlife habitat on working lands.

â€Å"America’s farmers are also on the frontlines in the fight against the scourge of hunger. Too many of our fellow citizens â€" too many children â€" go to bed hungry at night. The food our farmers and ranchers grow, raise, and bring to market can help end hunger in America once and for all.

â€Å"To aid in this effort, the farm bill, which is also a food bill, strengthens nutrition assistance that helps low-income families. For the first time in 30 years, this bill increases the minimum food stamp benefit and indexes it to inflation, so rising food costs do not erode a families’ purchasing power. It also eliminates the cap on childcare costs to help the working poor. The food stamp provisions in this bill will prevent benefit cuts for more than 13 million Americans over next five years.

â€Å"This bill also remedies two issues that have been left out in previous farm bills.

â€Å"First, it takes a critical step toward reform by eliminating farm payments to millionaires and closing loopholes that for decades have allows some to evade farm payment limits.

â€Å"Second, it promotes fruit and vegetables, and organic agriculture, two areas that have been overlooked, but are now critical sectors of agriculture.

â€Å"Members who focus on the substance of this farm bill â€" and not on red herrings â€" will see that this bill deserves their support. The tax loophole objection raised by the White House is no more than a desperate attempt at obstructionism. We must not let this disingenuous attack derail this bipartisan farm bill.

â€Å"The 2007 New Direction farm bill is a landmark achievement for farmers, ranchers, and rural Americans. The steps it takes will ensure that future farm bills will never again look like those of the past. And thanks to the efforts of Chairman Peterson and many others, this bill’s effects will also be felt far from farm country.

â€Å"As George Washington said: ‘I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture…’

â€Å"That was as true then, as it is now.

â€Å"Washington understood, as this bill’s authors understand, that encouraging and investing in American agriculture pays dividends for the entire nation. In this farm bill, we will strengthen American agriculture, but we will also do much more.

â€Å"We will help reignite rural America’s economic engine and create good paying jobs here it home. We will fuel our nation’s energy needs through clean, American-made, renewable energy. We will be better stewards of the land and protect our environment. And we will be a more caring nation by better meeting the needs of the most vulnerable.

â€Å"These great goals can be achieved with the help of this legislation and with the strong, bipartisan support of the House today. I urge my colleagues to vote yes for this New Direction in American farm policy.”