and it requires the buyers, the dairy food manufacturers, to send the payments to the department of agriculture instead. these dairy companies would face a morass of new regulations under this program and some of these companies are small businesses without the resources to dedicate the extra accountants, the extra personnel, to tracking the amount of milk they receive from individual farmers. and what's worse, companies would be subject to new audits and penalties if they miscalculate even one piece of this program. this amendment provides important farm support but it doesn't penalize the dairy food manufacturers, and it doesn't sting our consumers. our amendment is a solid consumer protection amendment. all of the national consumer

organizations have written to us opposing this stabilization program and supporting our amendment. and this stabilization program leaves everything else in place except this one part. so the ranking member is actually getting the majority of what he seeks for this industry, but he should not get a new supply management program for dairy. we should not turn the dairy program into something like the sugar program. as we know, milk, cheese, ice cream and yogurt are in the top ten most purchased items in supermarkets. the stabilization program is specifically designed to reduce supplies and raise milk prices. when that happens, we know that the consumption of healthy dairy products goes down because price increases are passed on to

consumers, and it impacts the families who have the fewest resources first, lower incomes, seniors who are on fixed incomes, who spend a higher proportion of their income on food than other consumers. the farm bill also includes a supplemental nutrition assistance program, the s.n.a.p. program, which many members of this committee along with myself want to protect. yet increased costs to consumers of dairy products also means that programs like s.n.a.p. will pay more for dairy products or simply stop helping tens of thousands of people in need. now, please let me just reemphasize for a moment that the stabilization program that our amendment will take out would artificially reduce the supply of milk throughout this

country, thereby increasing milk and dairy product prices for consumers. as milk prices increase, our lower income consumers are hit especially hard. these are tough economic times and as i mentioned, it is a fact that they spend a higher proportion of their income on food than all other consumers. this amendment actually saves more money than the underlying dairy bill. and yet, it is more affordable for small farmers with premiums for farmers with 250 cows or fewer, that are lower than those included in the chairman's mark. there are no payment limits and farms of all sizes can select any amount of milk production up to 80% of the operation's historic milk production and by margin protection in 50 cent increments from $4 to $800 per

hundred weight. unlike the chairman's mark, our amendment does not include annual fees to be paid by dairy farmers and most dairy farmers will actually pay less in premiums for equivalent coverage. in addition, dairy farmers will not be subjected to lost income caused by the stabilization program. we all know dairy regulations are complex but they are also outdated and inefficient, and proposed reforms in this farm bill should strike the right balance between farmers and between manufacturers and between consumers and our amendment does just that. this is a bipartisan amendment. democrats and republicans support it and it makes sense for all of us to vote for it. in a milk deficit district like mine in georgia, we need as much access to nutritious, healthy dairy products as we can get and to let the government come in and limit that access would be a

shame. our citizens of the united states of america and the entire world population deserve an abundant, affordable and sustainable food supply and i ask my fellow members of the house to support the bill and support this amendment that would help dairy products without including government control supply management program. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> the gentleman's time has expired. the chair strikes the last word and recognizes himself for five minutes. i want to thank the gentlemen for their leadership on this issue and i appreciate their perspective on dairy reform. dairy has never been an easy issue to tackle on the national level. differences between producers and processors, between regions, even between producers of different sizes have consistently interfered with our ability to reach consensus in national policy. while the last several years have been good for many, if not most commodity groups, let's be honest. dairy's had one of the worst

most volatile periods in their history. despite the fact that we do not have consensus among the dairy industry, i do think the recent challenges confronting the dairy sector have led to what we are seeing now, as a broad consensus for many elements of the reform package under consideration in the committee mark. the package we have before us is a good faith effort on the part of most industry participants to achieve balance among regions, operation sizes, among industry sectors. not everyone is happy. i know my good friends would like to see changes. but i also know my friends understand the need for this industry to move forward with or without the changes they are proposing. i'm of the opinion that the changes being proposed by my good friends in the goodlatte-scott amendment would fracture an already fragile industry consensus and delay our ability to move forward with

these necessary reforms. for that reason, i must respectfully of course oppose the amendment and encourage all of my colleagues to do the same. with that, i yield back the balance of my time. i recognize the ranking member to strike the last word. >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> recognized for five minutes. >> i move to strike the last word. you know, i have been working on this for two and a half years. and you know, i have probably been around this place too long because i have been through the wars on the whole herd buyout and all this other stuff that we've done over the years, and while my good friends, mr. goodlatte and mr. scott i think are doing this with the right -- they're doing what they think is right, this is a recipe for disaster. because, you know, the history of what we've been through in the past. we went through as the chairman said, the worst situation in '09

that we have ever gone through in dairy. we lost a huge amount of equity. we cannot afford another year like that. we'll have the folks that are pushing this amendment will have a problem because there won't be enough milk to fill their plants. that's what will happen. that's the reality, whatever your ideology is. when we went through the '09 situation, it was bad but it would have been a heck of a lot worse if we wouldn't have had the cwt program where the industry went in and paid to move this milk. we had all this excess milk and they took the cwt, assessed their members and moved the milk into the marketplace or into the export market to get rid of it

and it shortened and dampened the downturn. the problem is that 70% of the producers paid for it. the other 30% got a free ride but they went ahead and did it and they did what had to be done. this proposal that's in here now does not require anybody to buy this insurance. you don't have to participate. you don't have to be involved in this stabilization fund. but you can't buy margin insurance unless you are and the reason for that is that if we get in another oversupply situation like we did in '09 we think everybody should participate. anybody that's getting government help should be part of the solution and that's what this does. that's why the industry came around this. now, you go back to '09, you talk about the consumers. what a bunch of nonsense. we have the lowest milk prices in history and did anybody cut their prices at the retail level? no. they raised them. give me a break.

you're going to hear the same thing on sugar. this is all a bunch of nonsense. these people cannot get stuff cheap enough and they are never going to cut their prices, so if you want to protect consumers, you will not be for this amendment, you would be against it, because this is the worst anti-consumer am else we see on day-to-day basis and most of them do it for less. it is a way of life, not just a way of making a living. second, i am very proud to serve on this committee. in this rank as congress this is the most bipartisan committee we have, and we have an outstanding chairman and an outstanding ranking member. they have worked hard to put together this program. i trust them. the third thing i want to say is about vermont farmers. i know this applies to your farmers. the origin of this program is from farmers up. it is not something that was cooked up by the chairman and the ranking member. our farmers in vermont and this is true for farmers in california where mr. costa was going out and talking to them and farmers in your area. they were getting hammered.

they have no control over what happens to the price of milk. they have been dealing with these extraordinary spikes and dips and the dips are getting deeper in the valleys between the rise and the fall have been getting wider and they're eating into equity. what that means in simple english is that their kids are not going to be able to take over their farm and carry on what has been a family tradition. i know we all care about that. we have a tough call policy wise about what do we do because that's a shared goal to keep those folks in business. the folks that we care about, they're the ones who came up with this plan. they said, hey, if we respond to every collapse in price by doing the only thing in our farm that we can do, whether we have up 75 milkers or 10,000 milkers, and that's to increase production, what happens? the price spirals down even more and it accelerates rather than diminishes this toxic situation that our farmers face. that's the challenge.

now, good question, how do we address it? my farmers in vermont, i suspect, are like your farmers wherever you are. they're small government conservatives. they're so proud of themselves and their families because they're on their own. the only thing that breaks that is they help any other farmer whose barn goes down, is burned, needs help. they help one another. they believe in individual responsibility and they believe in serving their community. that's what they do. they're the ones who conceived this program. they think it works for them. our chairman and our ranking member, two men in this congress i trust as much as i trust anyone else, they looked it over. they kicked the tires. they think this works. there are some competing interests. there always are. what's new about that? some of the producers, the lower the price of milk, the lower they can buy it, the more profits they can make on the sale of their ice cream or whatever their product is. god love them, we need them as much as we need anyone else.

there has to be some balance. there has to be some stability. what this does and it is a voluntary program, no farmer has to participate in this unless they want to. keep in mind, none of our farmers like to get involved in government programs if they can possibly avoid it. it is a voluntary program. they get the signal that, hey, prices are collapsing and they can then decide on a voluntary basis that they're going to start reducing a little bit of their production. that's going to have a supply and demand kind of effect, gives a signal, and brings the balance back into place. the goal here has to be sustainability of american agriculture. we can't have a system where one side really profits while the other side perishes. that's what it boils down to. we all have to be in this together. i thank the chairman and the ranking member for putting together i think a very sensible

program that has as its goalal loug farmers the option to have some capacity to affect their future both on the price side and how much they produce side. this is a very important provision, the amendment before us would unravel it, and it would certainly affect the view that a lot of us have about this ag bill, complicated situation, so i speak in opposition to this amendment. thank you. >> gentleman's time expired. what purposes the gentleman of new york seek recognition. >> strike the last word. >> gentleman is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. let me just begin by associating myself with the marks of my good friend mr. welch, very much enjoyed working with him. they've had tough circumstances with the storm and worked together to get through that and the veterans work we're doing together and the words you shared this morning were passionate and in point and i want to associate myself with those remarks and also reach out to my other neighbors. enjoyed working together with

bill owens, mr. penn gry and courtney as we prepared for this mark today. let me say thank you for your work you have done bringing toward this amendment. coming from a state under supplied, i can certainly empathize with the concern with stabilization. let me say this. the ranking member has done extraordinary work to build consensus, to listen to farmers. he has traveled on more than one occasion to meet directly with my dairy farmers, and has earned their respect. he has listened to them. as we have evolved over the last year-and-a-half from foundations to dairy security, i will tell you our farmers feel very respected that our ranking member has listened to them, and within the last 24 hours i was

in receipt of this amendment, carefully read it, and i have also looked at the cbo score of it, and i am just at the point where i need much more time to digest this. i look at the cbo score and it appears in form by chaos theory. you know, when i look at the array of prices and i see $4 and then i see 4.50, 5, 5.50, of course based on the numbers that we have given them for underlying bill, it is not clear to me why this number moves around so much. how does it go to being better for the smaller farmers in one price to more expensive in the next to better to more expensive, and i will tell you that while i deeply appreciate the work that's been done, listening to my farmers late last night and reaching out to them what, we don't want to do at this point is undo all the

good work that's been done and really the reputation that's been put on the line to evolve this policy to get it where it serves everyone. i am going to ask respectfully and urge and inspire mr. goodlatte and mr. scott to continue to work with the ranking member. this is a process. we're going to get to the point where we're going to eventually get a camera bill and one we'll be proud to get behind, but for now i am going to vote against this amendment and urge my colleagues to do the same. i yield back. thank you, mr. chairman. >> gentleman's time expired. the chair would note to the membership we only have 99 more amendments to go. mr. ribble, carr doze aand costa. >> strike the last word. >> gentleman is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want to thank the ranking member for the work they have done on the you should lying bit. i want to thank mr. goodlatte

and scott for what they offer today. i am from northeast wisconsin. when you combine dairy production and processing the majority side of this committee i have the largest district. this has been a hot topic within wisconsin for the better part of my term here in congress. i have heard today that it has taken a long time to build consensus. i would dare say to you there is not consensus, that we should be cautious about undoing work, the work hasn't really been done because there is no consensus. i hear from dairy farmers and processers alike and on almost a daily basis their single issue they're most concerned about is supply management. my colleague and friend mr. welch talked earlier about how conservative farmers are. i would agree with that. they seem certainly to be conservative in northeast wisconsin. they're concerned about the government that can tell them how much product they can produce and then we'll hear from those supporting supply management that it is an important part to make sure that

we save farmers, that we don't because food supply in this country and across the globe is so important and so significant, that we have to be careful that we don't do anything that would damage food supply. i would ask you this question. is not shelter equally important? should we then consider having supply management for home builders, for those that built apartments and complexes and housing prices get too low, let's restrict how many homes we can build in this country to drive prices back up. how are low prices, how is low prices bad for consumers and taxpayers? so i struggle idealogically, and i think it is an ideological battle, whether the dpoft should be in a place where they're controlling and dictating supply of any product in this country, of who can win and who can lose. i think what mr. goodlatte and mr. scott have done in this amendment is found that razor thin line of balance where we provide a margin insurance

program to protect those farmers who might run into problems when the cost of feed goes up, for example, and when the margin begins to go down and we have a circumstance like we did in 2009, they're able to share in the risk with the rest of the taxpayers. i think the goodlatte and scott amendment is spot on on what should be done and it reflects american policy and it reflects free market economy and allows our market to move, and in fact when prices go down, the opportunity for wisconsin and actually u.s. dairy farmers goes up, opportunity goes up because we can go across the globe and compete globally now, and actually our dairy industry will in all likelihood grow as a result of this while maintaining a margin insurance program that will protect farmers and share risk. so i associate myself with this amendment, mr. chairman. i think mr. goodlatte and mr.

scott have got it right, and i am planning and encouraging my colleagues to vote for it. with that i yield back. >> for what purpose does the gentleman from california, mr. car doza seek recognition. >> strike the last word. >> i agree whole heartedly we need to move this along. i do want to associate myself strongly with mr. peterson's remarks and say that those of us who have been around for a while remember the catastrophe of the 1996 farm bill and they called it freedom to farm. it was more like assurance to go broke for much of many farmers in america. this is going to be my last farm bill i will work on because i am leaving congress after this term, but i wanted to make the point to the new members that serve on this committee that if we forget what's happened in

history and move blindly based on ideology, that we can get ourselves in the same pickle and predicament we found ourselves just a few years ago, and we really must heed the advice of mr. peterson. he says he is frustrated and may have been here too long and i will tell you he ain't been here too long. we need that institutional memory in this place so we don't make the mistakes of the past. i urge my colleagues to defeat this amendment. i will always place my faith in and allegiance with those hard working men and women of america who work the soil, work with the livestock, and try and eek out a living for their families, and the big processors will do just fine. mr. peterson was absolutely correct when prices collapsed during 2009, i would go to my grocery store and the prices hadn't moved one nickel for the

gallon of milk i was trying to purchase. we have to understand what the market dynamics are. it isn't a free market economy in some of these places. prices go up at retail level, but the wholesale level is a whole different situation. so, mr. chairman, i felt compelled i needed to reiterate that. i whole heartedly support what you're trying to do in defeating this amendment, and there are things that i am going to propose in a few minutes to try to level the playing field on the feed cost adjustment, but on this particular question i urge my colleagues to vote no. >> gentleman yields back his time. the chair has the gentleman from california, mr. costa, and mr. stetson still in the query and we'll proceed to vote. for what purpose does the gentleman from california seek recognition. >> i move to strike the last word. >> gentleman is recognized for five minutes. >> i want to associate my comments with the chair and the

ranking member. i appreciate members goodlatte and scott's efforts with this substitute amendment. however, i think a great deal of work has been ton as it relates to changing the federal marketing order and dairy policy as we look at the 2012 reauthorization of the farm bill. clearly there is not total consensus among the dairy industry across the country or on a regional basis. i would submit to you that that is almost an impossible goal to achieve. as the chairman noted. i reflect and represent three generations of a dairy family in california and i formerly chard the senate ag and water committee in state senate in california. i have had a lot of experience in dealing with these dairy issues, even within california which is over 20% of products

throughout the entire nation. there is no consensus on how we go forward and in california we have our own regulatory scheme with our own state milk pool, so the fact we eliminated a number of programs that within the milk program and the underlying amendment i think is a positive note. the fact that there was agreement among the dairy industry throughout the country i think is a positive note. i think the agreement that we adopt a marginal insurance program i think is a positive note. the only area that there is left of disagreement at this point it seems to me is the issue of supply management. let me speak to that for a moment. my family, and i remember as a young person the days when dairymen prior to the milk

pooling act in california in 1966 when a contract that a dairy man and woman had had with their processor was not worth any more than the paper it was written on. if a processor decided to stop purchasing your milk, they called you up that day and that was it. for those of you who aren't familiar with the dairy business, i am. that business operates 365 days a year, 24/7, so you can say, okay, we don't need your milk, mr. costa anymore. however, those cows have to continue to be milked. that milk goes down the gutter. so there are other applications to the complexity of how we deal with this change that is reflected in this legislation. let me say one other aspect about the supply management that is of controversy. i had one of the largest co-ops in the entire country and

certainly therefore in california in my office yesterday, and they supported goodlatte and scott amendment and i listened earnestly to their comments. they make good points. however, that co-op as well as another major co-op not only in california but in wisconsin and minnesota in the last three months have adopted their own supply management within their co-op. so in essence what i believe is occurring is they support supply management but they want to do it within a co-op to co-op basis so therefore it is not the concept of trying to get a controlling of their supply because they know that they have a continued problem with over production and therefore over capacity. the joke being in california what do dairymen do when milk prices are down? they produce more milk. what do dairy men do when milk prices are up?