Statement of Congressman John Baldacci on July 9, 2001 at the Monthly Meeting of the Northeast Dairy Compact Commission

As a member of the House Agricultural Committee I’ve had a good opportunity to work with some if not all of you. It’s been an interesting four terms on the House Agriculture Committee. As we do the reauthorization of the Farm Bill this session, I want to thank Commissioner Spear for his leadership at the state level, and Fred for his advice and council, and advice and council over my four terms in Congress. There were some dairy farmers who thought I didn’t know which end the milk comes out of the cow, but I assured them that in lots of cases I’d just open the carton and pour it right out. People have been willing to start with me from scratch and bring me along, and I appreciate Colon and his leadership, and for serving on the Commission as one of its officers and being willing to work with dairy farmers. I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to work together in advancing not just the Dairy Compact but other agricultural issues, because I think in a lot of cases we don’t speak up enough, we don’t get out enough. We do our work and if things aren’t going well we work harder at it thinking we’ll somehow turn the corner. I’ve found some of the best families are working families. I’ve found families that have committed to communities with participation in 4H and many other efforts to be one of the many value assets we have here in Maine, the Northeast and frankly in the country. That’s something we need to do an awful lot more of.

A lot of the facts that have been raised by Congressman Allen and Senator Collins, I’ll just say, “me too, also.” But I do want you to know that this is going to be probably one of the more challenging times getting the Northeast Dairy Compact reauthorized. As you know, we tried to bring it forward in the House Appropriations Committee by Representative Walsh from New York, but we were met with resistance by the administration. The administration put out a letter that it wanted the Congress to hold up on approving the Compact because it hadn’t made a decision yet as to what it thought about dairy policy and what it felt about the Compact or any other association. Since that time we have all communicated bi-partisanly to the administration the urgency of this because of the expiration coming up the latter part of September, early part of October, and wanting to get this on the table as soon as possible.

As you know, the normal channels for the reauthorization would be through the House Judiciary Committee on the House side, different from what the Senate has to experience. The chairman of the committee is from Wisconsin. As you all know, it’s been talked about, the region that poses the most problem is in the upper-Midwest. Even though we have a great deal of bi-partisan support and overwhelming membership in the House, at the levels of some of these leadership positions we’re running into a wall. We’re going to be meeting later this week (Congressman Allen has been very much a part of this) we’re going to be getting together with the Speaker to discuss scheduling these matters on the House floor because we need an alternative route to get this to the House floor and so we’re arranging a meeting this week with the Speaker to discuss how we may be able to do that. The other option we have is through the Farm Bill itself because there is good support within our committee for the reauthorization of the Compact and we’re looking to advance it when we do the reauthorization of the Farm Bill overall. Our hope as a committee is that we would be able to get the major titles done prior to the August recess. It’s an ambitious schedule but it’s one in which we’ve talked to Senator Harkin about on the Senate side (he’s the chair of the Agriculture Committee) and that we’ll be trying to advance. One of the things that I’ve appreciated about the House Agriculture Committee and agriculture in general is that it has less to do with the partisan politics and more to do with crops and regions than it’s got to do with the politics. We’ve been able to work bi-partisanly over the years, this year being no different.

One of the things I would just like to add to the facts that have been presented is that in one of our counties here in Maine the benefits in terms of the Dairy Compact is that 80 percent of the open space (and you know particularly in the Northeast and the challenges and issues in terms of growth and sprawl and what have you) 80 percent of the open space in Androscoggin County was directly attributable to dairy farms. And I think that the combination that Senator Collins and Representative Allen talked about in terms of open space and livability quotients within our state and within the region, I think you have to look at agriculture. I think the longer and the harder we work together to promote a stronger, viable agriculture, I think it will be leading to an overall healthy state and region for all of us to live in and be able to raise our families in.

As I’ve said to others, I come from a small business background myself, a family business. I’ve several brothers and sisters, and in a small family business we have the right and obligation to work because we were protected from the child labor laws. And I think that’s why we’re sharing the misery together because we’ve been raised in the same kind of experiences. But as my mother says to me, and I say to you, it never hurt us any, so I guess we appreciated the opportunity to be able to do that.

I want to thank you for meeting here, and for being a part of it and for working together with you. You each one have been great to work with in Washington as we advance these issues. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to go back at it this session, and maybe there’ll be a point in time when we can get into questions and answers later on. I want to thank you for the invitation. Have a good day.