Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I first wanted to comment on the

importance of an agreement on the farm bill. This is something that has

been long in coming. I want to thank Chairman Roberts and Ranking

Member Stabenow for their work, as well as the Members in the House,

including my colleague from Minnesota, Republican leader Collin

Peterson. He will be taking over the Ag Committee in the House next

year. This is a bill that is so important to rural America and in my

State.

We have seen low commodity prices for too long. As a member of the Ag

Committee, I know the last farm bill--the one we are operating under

currently--has some things for a strong safety net, but this farm

bill--the new tentative agreement--will allow us to make some changes

to the way the data is collected, which will be helpful for our farmers

with crop insurance. We have some improvements in dairy. We have some

good work that is going on with regard to conservation and some changes

there.

As you know, our Senate bill got 86 votes. We don't even get that for

a volleyball resolution around here. It was a bipartisan bill, and much

of that bill, I know, will be contained in this tentative agreement.

``Tentative'' is with a small ``t,'' and the only reason we are saying

that is because we have to get the printed version out, and my hope is,

we can get this done in the next week. We do not want to go into next

year without a farm bill, with what we are seeing with the tailwinds

from these tariffs, with what we are seeing with diseases lurking out

there. In Minnesota and in other States in the Midwest, we just got

through avian flu a few years back, and every so often we have seen

some outbreaks of that. We lived through H1N1. We have a really good

provision in here that I authored with Senator Cornyn for a vaccine

bank.

So there is a lot of important, steady policy in the farm bill to

show rural America we have their backs and really to show the world

that at a time of great global competitiveness and with issues for our

farmers with everything from weather to prices, to global competition,

we want to make sure America stands by our farmers, and this farm bill

is a sure way to do it.

I am very excited, as a member of the Ag Committee, that we are close

to releasing some language here and look forward to getting this done

immediately.

We have all litigated these issues over the last year. It is not like

some new idea had been airlifted into this bill. Literally, every

single issue--from the nutrition discussions to the conservation

issues, to what we have seen on the farm programs, to rural economic

development, to rural broadband--has been discussed at length, and we

are ready to go. Let's get this bill done.