GRASSLEY: This week, I am continuing my efforts to -- efforts
that are going to be addressing the issue of concentration and
agriculture. So introducing legislation that requires 25 percent of a
packer's daily kill coming from the spot market. It's nearly
identical to one I introduced with Feingold last year. Feingold of
Wisconsin is going to help me again this year.
I've said this to all you before and to farmers, but I want to
repeat it. It's something I heard straight from the packing company.
When the price is high, the packers kill their own livestock. When
the price is low, the packers fill their slots with cheap livestock
from the family farmer.
This legislation would guarantee that the packers are in the cash
market purchasing livestock from independent producers every day and a
common federal standard of benefiting all producers across the country
having more market choices. The legislation will guarantee all
livestock producers market excess at a fair price. Transparency act
is important legislation to guarantee that livestock producers receive
a share shake at the farm gate.
And then I want to tell you about thing that are a little more
general beyond agriculture for the benefits of those of you that might
be interested in something non agriculture.
Over the last month, the federal government has spent an
unprecedented amount of money trying to help our economy. This week,
I'm putting an extra focus on legislation and initiatives helping the
federal government be more accountable to the taxpayers.
So, today, I'm introducing legislation to clarify my 1986 update
of the False Claims Act which allows individual citizen whistleblowers
to bring cases with or without government's help against those who
defrauded the government. While this legislation isn't used a lot in
the Agriculture Department, there's nothing that stops it being used
there.
The law has recovered nearly $22 billion for the U.S. Treasury
that would otherwise have been loss to fraud.
I'm ready for questions, and I'm going to start with Tom Rider.
QUESTION: Good morning, Senator.
Senator, I was wondering if you thought maybe the climate might
be a little bit better for your transparency and anti-competitive bill
now that JBS has backed off of purchasing National Beef. Do
you think the climate might be a little bit better?
GRASSLEY: I think the climate would be a little bit better,
basically, because there's a newer Congress that's a little more
liberal and a lot of Republicans would find my legislation as anti-
market. And I see it as a legitimate role for government to be in
because government is to preserve entrepreneurship.
And so you shouldn't have some big packer unfairly competing
against the family farmer.
Gene, Iowa Farmer?
QUESTION: Yes, Senator.
I see USDA and the White House has now named a deputy secretary
of agriculture, Kathleen Merrigan. I didn't know if you find any --
any thought on that.
GRASSLEY: I don't know much about her. And I'm going learn an
awful lot, of course. It immediately raises a question when she comes
from Tufts University, does she know much about agriculture, but I'll
bet you she does but I don't know for sure.
And she's had a little bit of experience in government before.
And I'm looking forward to meeting her. Now, maybe when it comes to
policy, it's not a big deal because maybe that position is the nuts
and bolts of the daily operation of the department and not like the
secretary involved or some assistant secretaries involved in policy.
But I don't know much about her, but I'm going to, you know, give
her the benefit of the doubt. I should do that.
Let's see. That was Gene.
Julie, Brownfield?
QUESTION: No questions at this time.
GRASSLEY: Ken Root.
QUESTION: Senator, good morning.
GRASSLEY: Good morning.
QUESTION: I wonder if you'll tell me about your reaction to
being on CBNC this morning on "Squawk Box." How did it go?
GRASSLEY: Well, you know, when you pay staff and they tell you
you do well, you might want to raise questions about whether they're
doing it because I pay them or directly from their heart. But I've
had a couple people who I trust that have said that I did well.
Let me say to you that I just felt comfortable doing everything I
did. Particularly, I see my role -- and I hope every other members of
Congress see their role -- that maybe the pessimism that's being
spread by the president saying how bad things are going to get and how
bad they are that it may -- we may be talking ourselves into a deeper
recession than we need to be in.
So you heard me this morning or maybe you didn't hear me this
morning talk about that we've been through -- I think we've measured
28 recessions in the 150 years been measuring recessions. And we've
gotten through it, and we are a strong economy, and each generation
has lived better than the previous generation.
So I've got great confidence that we will get through this,
although, it's going to be tougher than probably anything, at least,
since 1982. And it could -- you know, if it gets worse, it could get
different.
We talked a lot about the nationalization of banks. And I talked
about how leery I was of that. That if some bureaucrat in Washington
was going to take over John Deere, I wouldn't want to buy a John Deere
tractor. So I raised some questions about our ability to run banks.
QUESTION: Senator, could I ask you one more thing? And that is
on the direct payments. Comments have been made by Secretary Vilsack,
in effect, saying that in a time of budget crunching and pressures
from WTO that direct payments might be eliminated.
GRASSLEY: Well, if it were WTO and we believe in the rule of law
in international trade, it could affect a lot of things in our farm
program. But direct payments would be one of the last ones affected
because you get the direct payment regardless of trade. But there's
other things that we do to support agriculture that maybe would have
to be changed.
But if you were going to still support agriculture, you might go
more to the direct payment. So I think that -- I think that what the
governor is trying to do is just trying to get farmers to think
outside the box because of the issues of climate change coming up and
the -- and renewable fuels and what renewable fuels can do for
agriculture. I don't think he's trying to be punitive towards
agriculture because, right now, direct payments are there for the next
five years. And consequently, we don't have to legislate them.
Now, could you get into a budget situation that would effect
direct payments? Only if a lot of other government programs were
effected, too. Nobody's going to get away with just taking a whack at
agriculture.
Dan Skelton?
QUESTION: Good morning, Senator.
Richard Lugar, senator from Indiana, is proposing reevaluating
sanctions -- U.S. sanctions against Cuba. Does that change the
dynamics in the Congress? And would you assess that the move in both
the Senate and the House toward relaxing some of the sanctions against
Cuba?
GRASSLEY: Yes. The dynamics of the election have changed it so
that things that probably Lugar believes in -- and he's probably voted
that way and differently than me -- than I have in the past -- have
changed it to encourage greater freeing up.
My position is to continue doing what we're doing for medicine
and food but not to expand until we get political freedom. And,
basically, that means elections and freedom of speech and things of
that nature in Cuba. Then I'd take down every barrier to trade with
Cuba if that were to happen.
But I still -- that's where I'm coming from. But on the other
hand, I would have to say, considering how close loosening of trade
came through Congress the last couple times we voted on it, that
probably what Lugar wants to accomplish would be accomplished even
without the political freedom that I demand.
QUESTION: Could you assess the move in the House toward a
proposal like that?
GRASSLEY: I believe it would be as strong in the House as it is
in the Senate, maybe more so.
QUESTION: Thank you.
GRASSLEY: Stacia, National Farm Broadcasters?
OK. I've gone through the entire list. Anybody come in late
that I don't have circled here?
QUESTION: Senator, Gary Digiuseppe.
GRASSLEY: Yes, go ahead, Gary.
QUESTION: Yesterday, at his fiscal responsibility summit,
President Obama said, among the things he wants to do is to end
payments to agribusiness that don't need them. I don't know if you
know what he means, but what do you hope he means?
GRASSLEY: Well, I would say not agribusiness, just to non
farmers who are collecting farm payments or large farmers -- the group
you hear me refer to as 10 percent of the biggest farmers getting 72
percent of the benefits out of the farm program. Not that they get no
benefits, but that there would be a cap on what they get.
Now, when you get into agribusiness, if he's talking about meat
packing and wholesaling and processing of food, I'm not sure what he'd
be talking about. So I could only comment on what I've already
commented on.
QUESTION: Are you expecting to see some of your proposals on
payment limits in his budget on Thursday?
GRASSLEY: If I saw them in President Bush's budget, yes, I would
expect to see them in his budget.
QUESTION: Do you think there's much of a chance of getting them
adopted?
GRASSLEY: More so -- well, now, wait a minute. I better back
off because we recently, in June, had the last discussion of this and
it was very difficult to get it. I would say, in a situation where I
was talking to the previous person or maybe back to Ken Root, we -- if
you had a real tough budget situation and we were going to whack a lot
of programs and you were going to take some out of agriculture, I'd
say that's the first place you might get it.
QUESTION: OK.
GRASSLEY: Anybody else?
QUESTION: I have a question, Senator. This is Julie Harker with
Brownfield.
Tomorrow, the Senate Ag Committee is going to be considering the
nomination of Gary Gensler for CFTC. Do you support his nomination or
have any concerns? Do you think he's the right man for the job?
GRASSLEY: I don't have any reason to think he's not the right
person for the job. And I've -- and I've read a little bit about what
he thinks that there's some commodities that aren't being adequately
regulated that would have brought about the high degree of speculation
that we had in oil, for instance, last summer and the impact that that
had on other commodities and maybe not the market working that I would
be in favor of somebody that's willing to step in to that vacuum.
And also, then, he's going to join -- I assume that other people
that had -- that the terms don't expire are going to stay on. And I
talked to another member -- I forget his name now -- last September
that was already headed in that direction. And then we didn't think
the last summer that the chairman was much concerned about some of
these issues of speculation.
But it was noted in November, I think, that starting back in May
or June they had started some investigations along that line. So in
regard to Mr. Gensler, I want to ask him some questions about his role
at Treasury and his not wanting to regulate derivatives and swaps at
that particular time.
But if you go back, there was a person -- chairman of that in the
late Clinton era that wanted to regulate derivatives. And she was
shot down by Secretary Rubin and Greenspan and others. I don't know
whether she resigned for that reason or she resigned for other
reasons.
But there was any issue of regulating them. And, you know, I
think regulation is one thing, transparency is another. Some people
say they're one in the same. But you've heard me say many times that
we need more transparency in the financial community. And if we had
had more transparency on hedge funds and derivatives and on
securitized mortgages, we may not be in this recession that we're in
right now.
Anybody else?
OK. Thank you all very much.