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Press Office - Speeches
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SENATOR DOLE HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANT NEED TO ACCOMPLISH A TOBACCO QUOTA BUYOUT
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April 13th, 2004 - Hearing by the Subcommittee on Production and Price Competitiveness of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry
Opening Statement by Senator Elizabeth Dole:
Good morning ladies and gentlemen. As chair of the Subcommittee on Production and Price Competitiveness on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee I am pleased to call this Subcommittee hearing to order. When I was elected to the US Senate I chose to serve on the Agriculture Committee – and to chair this Subcommittee in particular – to help advance one of the chief issues from my campaign. That issue, of course, is the tobacco quota buyout.
This hearing is not intended to repeat what has been examined in previous hearings. The Senate Agriculture Committee held several hearings on a tobacco buyout when this issue first came to national attention in 1998. This past year the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing focusing on the positions of the growers, the companies and the public health community. Their positions are important, obviously, and those who wish will have the opportunity to submit comments for the record from that perspective by the end of this week.
But the real purpose for the hearing today is to examine this issue from a different vantage point – to look at it from the perspective of the long-term viability of the tobacco farm family and the rural communities that depend on tobacco production. In 2003, farm receipts from tobacco sales were less than 600 million dollars – a decline of over 500 million dollars as compared to 1997. That equates to a 1.1 billion dollar hit on North Carolina’s economy at current quota levels. The decline in our tobacco industry will continue to cause a negative ripple effect across our state. Tobacco production is crucial not only to our farmers and our leaf dealers; it also affects our equipment dealers, chemical dealers, and so many others. Under the status quo, we are simply exporting economic progress to Brazil and other developing countries when in fact we could be doing a better job here– if we just had the opportunity. I look forward to the testimony of North Carolina’s Congressmen, farm leaders, the leaf dealers, financial institutions, one of the major players in crop protection, and the chairman of the Johnston County Board of Commissioners – all of whom will provide their valuable insight on the need for a tobacco quota buyout from their particular area of expertise.
Before we move to those panels, let me give a brief overview on where the buyout stands in the US Senate. As all of you know, this past year the tobacco state members of the Senate – for the very first time – were able to come together on a consensus bill that was placed on the Senate calendar. Given the current make-up and interest of the members of the Senate – and perhaps most importantly, given the rules of the Senate – the object was to attach the buyout to FDA regulation after that piece of legislation was marked up in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Because a deal could not be reached with the public health community, an FDA bill was never reported from the Committee -- ending our hopes of passing a tobacco buyout coupled with FDA regulation on the Senate floor before the end of the 1st Session. Considering the quota cut that was looming at the time and the necessity of getting this buyout achieved, we led an effort to try to get a buyout attached as part of the end of the year consolidated spending bill. Because a bill had not passed on the floor of either chamber, in the final analysis there just wasn’t enough support to get it included. But that effort did raise the profile of this issue significantly, and we remain committed to leaving no stone unturned as we move forward this year.
It is my goal that our hearing today will help keep this issue on the front-burner and provide those skeptics in non-tobacco states an opportunity to see a different side to this issue than perhaps what they have been witness to so far.
At this point I would like to introduce the Subcommittee’s first panel, my colleagues on the House side, Congressman Richard Burr, who represents many of the smaller tobacco farmers in this state from the 5th district, and Congressman Bobby Etheridge whose district we are in today – and a tobacco farmer himself, to present their views on the tobacco buyout and any other comments they would like to make regarding the status of this important issue in the House of Representatives.
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