>> clerk will distribute the goodlatte amendment, number 23. the chair would recognize the gentleman to begin his explanation whenever he is ready. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. chairman, this amendment reforms the current sugar program. the underlying bill dramaticry reforms nearly every title i program. however, one commodity stands out for a total lack of reform, sugar. in fact, also unlike any other title i program the sugar program was not even debated during the committee's hearings on the reauthorization of the farm bill. the underlying bill demands sacrifices from almost all farmers in our districts, wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, peanuts, rice, these commodities and more are undergoing major changes and contributing most of the deficit

reduction in this bill. the bill leaves the sugar program and the sugar program alone untouched as if the sugar program were perfect and in absolutely no need of reform or even debate. i respectfully disagree. the sugar program needs to be re formed for many reasons. studies have shown the sugar program increases food costs. economists at iowa state university estimated that food price increases resulting from the current sugar program have cost consumers up to $3.5 billion a year. the current program has harmed the competitiveness of u.s. food manufacturing and the sugar program costs jobs. the same iowa state study estimated as many as 20,000 new jobs a year could be created if sugar policy were fully re formed. further, the sugar program constitutes an almost unbelievable government instrugs into private business decisions. under the market allotment system the federal government tells every sugar company the exact amount of sugar it can

legally sell down to the pound. can you imagine what we would call that if we did it in any other industry in america? it is a pure command and control regime. for all of these reasons i believe we need a serious discussion about sugar policy. a case can be made to repeal it completely and although there have been many groups saying my legislation would kill the sugar program, that is far from the case. this amendment does not repeal the sugar program or sugar import quotas. in fact, even with my amendment not a pound more sugar can enter the u.s. unless the secretary authorizes that it can come in. it rolls back harmful changes enacted in 2008, namely the strict limits on the secretary of agriculture's authority to set sugar import quotas and administer marketing allotments. the feeds stock flexibility program that requires taxpayers to foot the bill for buying up surplus sugar and reselling it to ethanol plants at a loss and price support increases. the amendment will also make

sugar policy more transparent by establishing a goal for the level of ending stocks of sugar and help small developing countries by permitting them to generate foreign exchange by leasing their import quotas to other countries. in 2008 congress went too far in shackling sugar policy with new market shorting provisions. we have seen the results in recent years with usda unable to increase imports even when supplies were tight both wholesale and retail sugar prices in the united states have set all time records. at the same time the gap between u.s. and world sugar prices widened far beyond historic levels. supplies were so tight in the summer of 2010 that the united states imported 200,000 tons of high tier or over quota sugar. this means the importer willingly paid a tariff that is deliberately set so high as to be prohibitive in normal conditions. there was simply no other sugar available from u.s., mexican or quota sources. once again, my amendment does

not change the basic tenets of sugar policy. instead, this amendment rolls back counter productive policy that is distorted markets and increased consumer costs since they were enacted in 2008. my amendment will save taxpayer costs and benefit consumers, small businesses and workers, and i encourage the members of the committee to support the amendment before i yield back, mr. chairman, i would like to point out to everybody this ad from the country of canada, north america's location of choice for confectionary manufacturers pointing out the growth in exports to the u.s. in confectionary products from 1995 to 2004 of 400%, from 300 million to $1.2 billion. it is very clear to me in a district where we have companies that manufacture products using sugar and one of those companies has reduced its workforce by 500 including 200 at a plant in my district that if we allow this

policy to continue the way it has, we're going to see more of this with folks moving their locations to canada, the, quote, choice for confectionary manufacturers. let's reverse that. let's keep the united states the choice for confectionary manufacturers by having a sugar policy that allows for the kind of flexibility for manufacturers that need sugar every day of the year to be able to get sugar at a competitive price every day of the year. thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back. >> gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from minnesota, the ranking member seeks recognition to strike the last word. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i move to strike the last word. >> recognized for five minutes. >> i strongly oppose this amendment. my good friend mr. goodlatte says this won't repeal the program, but what it will do is make it completely unworkable which is probably the same thing. i call your attention, there was

i guess a dear colleague or something sent around and we sent a rebuttal and all of you should have gotten that. i will call your attention to that. the sugar program that the changes that were made in '08 were reflecting where we were at that time and since then this program has operated without a problem. there has been no cost to the government. the feed stock flexibility has not been utilized. prices have been above price support baurz of world conditions and so forth. so we're fixing a problem here that doesn't exist, i guess, as far as i can see, and you need to understand why some of these provisions were put in. we passed nafta back in '95, '96, whenever it was. i opposed it. we came close to defeating it, but at the end of the day and

one of the big problems was unlimited imports of sugar from mexico. at the end of the day what happened was the clinton administration gave us a ten-year period before unlimited sugar could come in from mexico. that expired, that unlimited sugar provision expired about the same time as we did the '08 farm bill. we were concerned about a bunch of sugar coming in from mexico that we would screw up the system here in the united states. every other country in the world has support for the sugar program including mexico and including brazil, including all of the people that produce sugar. so it is not realistic for us to unilaterally disarm when everybody else is doing this. the industry in mexico, the government owns 20% of the industry, you know, and we have been able to deal with the mexican sugar that's been coming

in. we're up to over a million pounds, tons of sugar coming in from mexico, but we have been able to deal with it and operated at no costs and haven't had to use the feed stock flexibility, so it worked, but we're not sure the mexican government is kind of screwed up and the industry has kind of screwed up, and they're trying to get better. they have had quality issues down there. some of the sugar they produced is not good enough quality for american manufacturers, but they're improving. so cbo, the people that look at this say that we're not going to have a need for any of this program through 2021, that the program is going to continue to operate, no cost. this would also roll back the sugar price supports to 27 years

ago, 1985, so we're not talking about taking rice or peanuts or cotton or corn or soybeans back to 1985. the price loss program in this bill actually updates those price supports significantly, and i have worked with my friends around the country to support those increased levels. so i guess i just don't understand why we would go back to 1985 on sugar when we've had 114% increase in commodity prices since 1985, so i mean it just doesn't make any sense, and at the end of the day it is kind of like dairy. if the sugar prices came down, it wouldn't change a price of a candy bar. it wouldn't change the price of any of the things that sugar goes into because it is a miniscule amount. so we have a good domestic industry that provides jobs,

that's working. we have a no cost program, it is not broken, we don't need to fix it, so i ask members to oppose this amendment. >> gentleman yields back. the gentleman from florida seeks recognition. >> mr. chairman, i move to strike the last word. >> gentleman is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i rise today also in opposition to the goodlatte amendment at the desk. let me begin by stating the fact. sugar policy operates at no cost to u.s. taxpayers. it has for a decade, and it is projected by the usda and trusted academic forecasters to continue to do so for at least another decade to come. as our country wrestles with mounting budget deficits, we should look for more no-cost success stories. we shouldn't seek to weaken or eliminate the ones that we have. i am very proud of the fact that american sugar farmers are among the most efficient in the world.

of the 95 sugar producing countries and regions, 70 produce sugar at a higher cost than we do. in spite of adhering to the higher labor costs and environmental burdens and food safety standards that we have versus the world, our sugar producers still manage to generate 142,000 american jobs in 22 states. some people say if it is so efficient why do we need a u.s. sugar policy? i am tempted to answer with just two words. brazil and mexico. absent a u.s. sugar policy we would most likely be overrun with surplus sugar from these highly subsidized mega producer foreign entities. with the help of 30 years of subsidies and consumption mandates f mandates cane ethanol brazil rose from a small producer to dominate the world in the sugar

market, accounting for about half of all sugar exports. sugar is the by-product of pra zil's massive cane ethanol sector and the government tightly controls the brazilian fuel market ample demand for ethanol, more than half of all brazilian sugar cane goes to the ethanol. it makes enormous amount was subsidized credit available to its farmers, loans that generally are never paid back pf most frightening of all of the financial times recently reported government plans to invest what some estimates might be as much as 1 trillion to double the cane production over the next ten years. american sugar farmers can compete against sugar farmers head to head, but we cannot compete against foreign treasurys. the good line amendment is being depicted as a simple and innocent rollback of foreign policy. it purposefully ends a policy that fairly and legally protects

american sugar-producing jobs from being transferred to these foreign countries. this amendment only attacks u.s. growers and yet is complicit with all foreign countries that keep their sugar programs that protect their sugar-growing industries. this amendment would cut the sugar loan rate to 1995 levels. why are sugar farmers being singled out to have their loan rate decreased. no other crop is facing this type of cut, even though they've increased far more than the sugar prices have over the last five years. sugar growers don't get direct payments and never receive counter cyclical payments or loan deficiency payments. you can't ship cane and beets around the country like cane and cane must be processed almost immediately after it comes out of the field or otherwise it will lose its sugar content and our growers would have had to purchase nearly all of the mills and refineries. if the loan rate change

suggested were enacted, the u.s. sugar loan rate would be the same as it was 32 years ago. nothing costs the same as it did 32 years ago. this would be like rolling back the cost of $1.25 candy bar to the 40-cent price it was in the mid-80s. we are here today to ensure u.s. farmers have a price and risk options available to them. i support programs who help farmers who grow crops. we don't grow in florida, and i hope that my colleagues can support programs that work for crops grown outside of their own states. at the end of the day, this is a jobs issue. it comes down to a simple question. do you support american jobs or would you prefer to see them shipped off to brazil or mexico. the u.s. sugar industry generates 142,000 american jobs across the united states and 20 billion in annual economic activity. put american jobs and american

consumers first. whether you have sugar growers or sugar in your district or not, you have sugar growers and sugar in your country. i urge the committee it defeat this amendment that will roll back the policy that supports 142,000 american jobs. i yield back. >> gentleman yields back. for what purpose is the gentleman from texas seek recognition? >> the gentleman is recognized for five minute. >> i, too, oppose this amendment and words matter and my colleague recalls modest reform and i believe it is anything but a modest reform. this amendment is unnecessary and i would argue unfair. my colleague makes a comment that we didn't discuss sugar audits because quite frankly no one asked to talk about it and it doesn't cost anything over the past ten years and we don't expect it to cost the taxpayers in the last ten years and this issue has come up in the last

several weeks and no one had asked about it. and the program does work. one of the points my colleagues make is it reduces supplies of sugar or holds down supply. the world, the world agriculture supply is predicting a 1.8 million tons of excess sugar in the market this year and it's enough for 12 points for every man, woman and child in america and they're expecting huge supplies as well and they have to compete in the face of that. they also argue it's a jobs issue and quite frankly the limited amount of sugar in the candy bar has already been discussed and they move the job from verge verge to canada and it's the health care costs and the unknown of the health care costs that we'll face in the future and it has a much bigger

impact on whether folks move zobs and it's not the modest cost of sugar in the product, and i understand it, the five-pound bag of sugar aren't the ones bringing this forward. this amendment would drop significantly the protections that our sugar farmers have enjoyed and produced a product that america uses a lot of. and the job increase as we put this policy in place and that study assumes a 50% increase in consumption and the drop in the price of chocolate and the new jobs driven by increased consumption and input. i would also argue that this is dangerous to the sugar market

and let's source our sugar like other foods from america if we can and certainly not build into the law a heavily subsidized and protected imports from mexico and brazil as my colleague from florida mentioned. i would urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment. it's unnecessary and it has not been asked for throughout the entire process and no one brought up a problem with it. it works and let's don't fix a problem that does not exist. >> for what purpose does the gament from oregon seek recognition and my two republican colleagues here. reiterate the obvious factor of this program unlike many of the ag programs does not cost the taxpayer any money. that alone should recommend it to this group for continuation, and there's a lot of talk of

reducing sugar prices and you cut them by 30, 32% and it will drop by a percent or two and that's false. since the summer of 2010, sugar prices have dropped over 20% and the candy prices have gone up. there's been a study done when the senate was discussing this bill to decide whether or not they needed to go into this program and the research there showed that sugar prices were 24% higher -- excuse me, in developed countries and in developing countries, 24% higher. it decreases the volatility every american consumer would face. i urge this amendment. i yield back. >> for what purpose is the gentleman from kansas seek recognition? >> mr. chairman, i move to strike the last word. >> the gentleman is recognized for five minutes. >> i appreciate the comments of

various folks that have much more experience in this policy area, but in listening to the amendment and looking at that and visiting with folks, i believe it really is a reasonable accommodation of both sugar producers, sugar farmers and those who use the product. i recently had the opportunity to visit in my district one of the plants that use this product grabs one of the most well known candy makers in the entire country and perhaps the world and i don't know about the and they had an opportunity to move this plant to canada in part because of this policy. this is about american jobs and they would make more money in canada in part because of the current policy if we do not adopt this amendment and thank goodness it's a family-owned company and they're reticent to leave america, but it would serve them well to do that. my support for this amendment

will be about keeping american jobs in the manufacturing sector here in this country. we need to provide a little more marketplace competition in order to do that, so i appreciate my colleague offered this amendment and i would be in support with it. would the gentleman yield? >> yes, i would. >> i appreciate the gentleman yielding. i just want to respond to a few of the critics who said it would cost the taxpayers nothing. it is saves 72 million and taxpayers are also consumers and if they were not paying for this program in taxes because it would limit access to sugar markets that means that you pay more for sugar and the fact of the matter is there have been a number of times in recent years

where because of this convoluted system where you have to wait on the secretary to approve the importation of additional sugar when there is a shortage, you have manufacturers that are paying above tariff prices in order to get sugar into this country because they can't get it any other way and when they do that, they're paying more money and they're having to pass that cost on to their consumers unless they find a different way to do it and producing these products in other countries and then importing them into the united states with no tariff is not a good alternative. so i encourage my colleagues to support the amendment. >> i yield back my time. >> the gentleman yields back. >> the request for time and the chair strikes the last word and yields himself five minutes. i just simply note to my colleagues there were any questions about why wasn't sugar

addressed in the committee this year? why hasn't it been more of a factor as you work through the challenges you face? >> the single biggest challenge is doing our part to address the national debt, to address the annual operating budget and to come up with savings. that's where the $35 billion number comes from from cbo that is the underpinning of this very reform-oriented farm bill. sugar policy as some of my colleagues have noted doesn't have an effect on the federal budget. if you abolished the entire program, you don't affect the entire payment and there's no loan deficiency payments and there's nothing to cut. i was one of those folks who was very sensitive about the nafta proposal. it passed before i joined this committee i believe in 1994, mr. ranking member and there have been consequences of it that have -- we have worked to try to

addre address, the sugar program in this bill is one of those efforts. i -- i know my colleagues were sincere on all perspectives, but i do believe we have so many other battle weise need to fight. so many other struggles that lie ahead of us. i would urge my colleagues on the committee respectfully to defeat my good friend. i yield back, seeing no request for recognition we will proceed to vote on amendment number 23. all those in favor of the amendment by the gentleman of virginia, signify by saying aye. all those opposed signify by saying no. >> the noes appear to have it. on amendment number 23. the clerk will call the roll.

>> mr. good lat. >> aye. >> mr. johnson. mr. king? no. >> mr. king no. >> mr. nag bower. >> no. >> mr. conaway, no. >> in fortenberry. >> no. >> mr. forten berry, no. >> mrs. schmitt. >> no. >> mr. rooney. >> no. >> mr. rooney, no. mr. stutsman. >> aye. >> mr. stutsman, aye. >> mr. gibbs? >> no. >> mr. gibbs, no. mr. austin scott. >> no. >> mr. austin scott no. mr. tipton? >> no. >> mr. tipton, no. mr. sutherland. >> no. mr. sutherland, no. mr. crawford? >> no. >> mr. crawford, no.

>> mrs. roby, no. mr. desharelay. >> aye. >> mr. desharelay, aye. >> mrs. elmers. >> no. >> mrs. elmers no. >> mr. gibson. >> mr. gibson, no. mr. hol green, no. >> mr. schilling? >> no. >> mr. schilling, no. >> mr. ribbel? >> aye. mr. ribbel, aye. mr. peterson? >> no. >> mr. peterson no. mr. holden? >> no. >> mr. holden, no. >> mr. mcintyre, no. >> mr. boswell. >> no. mr. boswell, no. mr. baca? >> no. >> mr. baca, no. mr. cardoza? >> no. >> mr. cardoza, no. >> mr. scott? >> aye. >> mr. scott, aye.

mr. kwa ar. >> no. >> mr. costa? no. >> mr. costa, no. mr. wallace, no. >> mr. schrader, no. >> mr. schrader no. mr. kissel, no. mr. owens no. >> mrs. embrey, no. >> mr. courtney? >> no. >> mr. courtney, no. >> mr. welch? >> no. >> mr. welch, no. >> miss fudge, aye. >> mr. sublime. no. mrs. sewell, no. mr. mcgovern? mr. mcgovern, no. mr. chairman? >> no. >> oh, excuse me. mr. johnson?

>> yes. >> mr. johnson, yes? >> mr. chairman? i know the clerk will record no. >> no? >> no. mr. chairman, the vote is ten yeas to 36 nays. >> the amendment number 23 is not agreed to. the gentleman from iowa. >> mr. chairman, i have an amendment, number 69. the clerk will distribute amendment number 69. may i go ahead. >> the gentleman may proceed when he is prepared. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate the efforts going forth here. it will be a long day so i'll try to be short. as you know, the underlying bill offers two commodity-payment programs for significant loss

coverage. farmers may lose for a program that will address deep, multi-year price declines through a calculation in the index below the cost of production. it just happens the risk management is based on crisis. the revenue loss coverage allows farmers to choose a program that tackles revenue loss greater than 15% similar to the senate agricultural risk coverage, arc program through coverage based on country wide losses that uses the index below cost of prices. however, while both loss coverage programs provide a means to counter tough times and keep producers and ranchers afloat, the underlying bill only requires rlc participants to have a loss to receive coverage. this amendment would require that all participants in the commodity title would be