America’s Farmers and Ranchers Need Help

Earlier this week, the Senate debated and voted on my amendment to provide badly-needed federal aid to thousands of farm and ranch families across the nation whose livelihoods were devastated by natural disasters in 2005 and 2006. We got a strong bipartisan majority vote in favor of my disaster assistance package with 56 votes – 41 Democrats and 15 Republicans. But we needed a super majority of 60 votes. Unfortunately, several senators who support disaster assistance were absent. If they had been present, we could have prevailed.

The strong showing of support from my colleagues has me hopeful that emergency ag disaster legislation can pass in the next Congress. You can bet that I intend to bring it up again in the new year.

All across the nation, farmers and ranchers have been impacted by severe cycles of natural disasters over the past two years. In my state alone, floods and frost in 2005 and severe drought in 2006 resulted in millions of acres of crops being destroyed. Without federal assistance, tens of thousands of farm and ranch families will be forced out of business. That is how serious the circumstances are and that is why we must pass this emergency aid.

America’s farm and ranch families face a desperate situation. But with the added strength from last months elections, and the new farm friendly Senators joining the Senate in January, I am confident the next Congress will pass this bill.