[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 7] [House] [Pages 10069-10070] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]THE ACRE PROGRAM The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) is recognized for 5 minutes. Mr. FLAKE. Madam Speaker, Congress recently approved the farm bill and it's now on its way to a Presidential veto. Any farm bill that increases the size and scope of government, lacks real reform, continues to provide for wasteful agricultural subsidies, and even allows millionaires to continue to receive these subsidies, deserves the veto that it's going to get. It also uses a lot of budget gimmicks to get under the level that would allow it to pass in the first place. So I am glad that the President has decided to veto the bill. We should sustain it. There's another big reason to sustain a Presidential veto of the farm bill. It's recently come to light, and we only know this because we got the final draft of the bill I believe on the day or just the day before that we voted on it so very few of us were able to actually look through it and to see what was in it. One of the programs in it is called the Average Crop Revenue Election, or ACRE program. This will allow farmers starting in 2009 the option of taking a 20 percent reduction in direct payments and other farm supports in return for a Federal guarantee on their revenue. Now as we talked about during the debate on the farm bill, farmers can receive direct payments that don't relate to the price of commodities at all. They simply receive payments based on acreage that they had way back when. These payments total about $5 billion a year. They should be done away with completely. But they are now seen as an entitlement. We tried and failed to remove those direct payments from the bill. Those are received, as I mentioned, by millionaires. In fact, a couple, a farm couple, husband and wife in farm and nonfarm income, can make as much as $2.5 million and still receive direct payments in this legislation. If that wasn't enough, this new ACRE program will allow farmers to actually claim subsidies at a level far higher than they used to under the old bill. Under the farm bill, 2002, which was bloated in itself, once crops dropped below a certain price, then some subsidies would kick in. But apparently those prices were too low for this new bill. And so under this new program, at a far higher threshold, new subsidies will kick in. The Department of Agriculture estimates that if the price of corn drops, for example, to $3.25 per bushel, the program, this new ACRE program that is new to this bill would dole out nearly $10 billion just to corn farmers. If the price of wheat drops to $4.50 a bushel, wheat farmers would be eligible for $2.5 million in assistance. Again, this is assistance above and beyond what we have done in the past, or what the bill calls for, anyway. This is new money that taxpayers are exposed to. This is a lot of exposure. [[Page 10070]] It's indecent exposure for the taxpayers. If soybeans, for example, drop to about $7 per bushel, that is another $7 billion in assistance that will be going out to farmers. Now CBO's estimate of this program showed a net savings, but that was largely due to being forced to use outdated projections associated with the 2007 baseline. The bottom line is we have skyrocketing corn, wheat, soybean prices. When we base a new subsidy program off these high level prices, then we are going to kick in a lot more readily than we would have otherwise, and we are going to be paying out a lot more. The taxpayers will be on the hook for a lot more. These estimates, I think had they been available, had more people been aware of this new subsidy program, I think we would have had a lot more votes against the farm bill. It provides Members with a good reason, even if they voted for the farm bill last week, to sustain the President's veto and say let's go back to the drawing board. We simply cannot, cannot expose the taxpayers to this much subsidy. Way back when, part of what is driving corn prices so high, for example, are the ethanol subsidies that we are providing. We have been told for decades these were just to prime the pump. Once we get it started, get this program started, we won't need to subsidize ethanol any more. Yet, here again the bill we passed last week subsidizes ethanol heavily. It also imposes tariffs on imported ethanol. Now I believe that some people are worried that those ethanol subsidies, because we are learning how much they're increasing the cost of food and how much degradation of the environment is actually being caused by ethanol, that those ethanol subsidies might be going away. This is a way to guarantee money still being paid, regardless of ethanol subsidies, because the cry will be, Well, if we get rid of ethanol subsidies, the price of corn will drop and the taxpayers will be paying anyway if the price drops under this new subsidy program. So this is a way to simply ensure that we are paying subsidies, regardless. We shouldn't be doing so. We know that the farm bill, the old farm bill that we just replaced, the new farm bill, it pays out unnecessary subsidies, it distorts the free market, it forces farmers to plant where they shouldn't plant and not plant where they should, and it also distorts our international trade obligations and makes it less likely that we can open new markets. I would urge us, Madam Speaker, to sustain the President's veto of this farm bill. ____________________