The Hill Blog» Blog Archive » Senate Farm Bill Proposal Fully Funds Agreed to Senate-House Framework (Sen. Tom Harkin)

Senate Farm Bill Proposal Fully Funds Agreed to Senate-House Framework (Sen. Tom Harkin)

April 14th, 2008

The Senate farm bill is a strong bill and should be the model for the final farm bill that will become law. It addressed myriad national priorities and looked ahead to the future by strengthening farm income and disaster protection and filling the gaps in nutrition assistance, investing in farm-based renewable energy, helping farmers and ranchers conserve our natural resources, and devoting substantial new funding to initiatives for growers of fruits, vegetables and horticultural crops.

On Friday, Senate farm bill conferees presented House conferees with a proposal for the farm bill that maintains the investments of the Senate-passed bill with strong farm income protection as well as investments in nutrition, conservation and renewable energy and a program to provide disaster assistance to farmers.

The framework sent to the House maintains the investments of the Senate-passed bill and thanks to the Senate Finance Committee, it is deficit neutral. Later today, all Senate and House conferees will meet to consider the proposal, so I urge House conferees to consider this framework and negotiate in good faith so that we can meet our April 18th deadline for the bill.

Details of the framework are available on the Senate Agriculture Committee web site.

Sen. Harkin is chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry and the Senate-House Conference on the Farm Bill.

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By Iowa Dem. Sen. Tom Harkin

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 1:50 pm and is filed under Politics, Labor .

This section is a Q&A slot featuring interviews with members of Congress and sometimes with senior aides, selected lobbyists and policy experts. The Hill will ask the questions, but we welcome your input; to help us shape the discussion please send your comment.
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The Hill : CBS Foreign Correspondent Kimberly Dozier recently talked with The Hill’s Erica Wisniewski about the injuries she sustained covering the war in Iraq and how she has used her experience to educate Congress on recovering from war injuries.

The Hill : See a partial transcript of the interview below.

The Hill : Could you explain what happened the day of the explosion? What were you doing there?

Kimberly Dozier : We were visiting a spot where very uncharacteristically a roadside bomb had gone off hitting an Iraqi patrol the day before. Captain Funkhouser, our guide, wanted to talk to Iraqis on the street, asked them what they’d seen, look at them face to face, eye to eye. He said they won’t be able to lie to me face to face. They’ll tell me who planted that bomb.

Kimberly Dozier : With that we were on that street, outside of our Humvees, walking towards a group of Iraqis to talk to when the bombers remotely detonated an estimated 500 pound car bomb. It blew burning shrapnel through us, killed Captain Funkhouser and his translator, killed Paul and James, my crew, and left me fighting for my life.

Kimberly Dozier : I was reporting those figures every day, the numbers of American dead. But I glanced over the numbers of American injuries, had no idea how badly you could get torn up and still survive. And the amazing thing is that you can still survive, that they can put you back together.

The Hill : What did you testify to Congress about and what was that experience like?

Kimberly Dozier : I was allowed by CBS to testify once before the Senate before Sen. Inouye. I testified with a surgeon of mine from Shock Trauma Maryland, Dr. Andy Pollock, who is very active in the orthopedic community in terms of trying to bring more research money to blast injuries.

Kimberly Dozier : Now I couldn’t testify in favor of any specific program, but I was basically a living example. I would go before, either when I went before the Senate, or I’ve met with some Congressmen and Senators quietly, and told them my story, told them here’s what happened in the hospital, here are the decisions my family had to make about what steps to take with my legs, here of the possibilities of what we could do. Look, if I had been hit in 2003, they tell me I’d be dead.

Kimberly Dozier : With all of the medical advances since then, let’s see--2004, they would have immediately taken off both legs. 2005, definitely would have lost the right leg, they tell me, because it had turned black. But by 2006, they’d learned enough about limb salvage that they gave the leg another 36 hours, and it turned out to be bruising, not diseased, and the leg came back. Now I’m walking, I’m training for a 10k.

Kimberly Dozier : This is the kind of thing that people in Congress need to hear about so that these programs get as much attention as some of the other things the media has brought attention to, and therefore get the research funding that can make a difference.

Richard Whitt : Our primary issue is an open internet. You can look at that in a variety of ways. Network neutrality is one subset of that -- the idea that people can go on the Internet and use whatever applications and devices they want to without interference by the broadband provider.

Richard Whitt : Under the rubric of open internet, we really would like to see Congress use its oversight authority to insure the market is developing appropriately and take steps where they think the markets are constraining the ability of consumers to use applications and devices and to do what they want to do on the Internet.
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