CONGRESSMAN BOSWELL: Well, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Madam Secretary. I am still kind of practicing on saying "Madam Secretary". It still feels good, and I appreciate the fact that she has a tender remark for this senator. I know Dan very well too. Another person in the crowd that I just noticed that is with Congressman Neil Smith is his son Doug, and I don't know if he's still here. A very special person in the crowd, my wife Dodi, my partner in this life's experience that we have gone through, and so I'd like to point out that she's here today along with David Stein is here in the crowd. So Governor, we're happy to be here, and you always told me you had to go, and I probably embarrassed you by saying you had --

GOVERNOR VILSACK: I'm going to stay.

CONGRESSMAN BOSWELL: You're going to stay? I served with the Governor for four years in the Iowa Senate, and I am very, very, proud of the work he's doing and the commitment to agriculture. So Mr. Secretary, Ambassador, and the rest of you distinguished folks, it's just great to have you here. Thank you for coming, and Dan, you've come before many times, and I know you'll come again, and I know of your commitment to agriculture. And I want to thank everybody that's put this together as we prepare to go into this next round of WTO negotiations. I want to talk a little bit about that, but I can tell you -- and as you already know, the people in this audience today -- some of the farmers and producers that we have here are going to share some pretty heart-felt situations, and I'll touch on it. I can tell you this, and maybe that's why a lot of us do what we do, but night after night I wake up thinking about an individual in southern Iowa, a fine young man, well-educated, doing everything with all those good techniques he learned at our great University of Iowa State, working hard, has borrowed some money for some land, has borrowed some money for machinery. We've all done that. And to size up his operation, he's went out and leased some land and works his butt off, and he can't make it, and that's not right. That's not right for him, our state, or our country.

I know another family that's just getting ready to graduate their two sons from high school, and they want to go into agriculture. And so after much, much study and preparation and just checking with everybody, very carefully they sized up his operation and now with the prices we got today, he doesn't even know if he's going to hang on to the farm let alone make an opening for someone else to join in. And that causes me to walk the floor, as it does some of you. It woke me up last night and the night before and the night before that. And just two days ago -- when I mentioned it last night over the holiday, I went to a county fair a couple days ago, as I walked out through the livestock barns, there was a farmer cleaning out a pen.

I saw his youngster out washing a calf. He was getting ready. I'd guess him to be in his early 50s. I stood there for a moment and he turned around and he set his fork down, and I said if you live around here, I'm your congressman. He said I know who you are. And I knew right then that I was going to get it. But you know, I understand. My partner will verify this and so will my banker because we went through the '80s, we came that close (indicating) to being put in the street. I understand. So I was able to stand there and listen and try to join in. This man said nothing was given to me. He said, I had good health and a good job. He said, my dad told me work hard and I'd be successful, and he said, I've worked hard, and I put a pretty nice operation together, and I'm proud of it, and I still work hard. I've educated a couple of kids, and I'm thinking in terms of now I've got some equity here and have the opportunity to retire and do a little travel and so on, he said, it's falling around my shoulders. My equity is getting away from me. So I may have nothing. And I don't know what I've done wrong. Well, I can tell you, my heart was right down around my heels as I walked to the car.

So we come today to talk about world trade. It's terribly important to us. Senator Grassley has said the things that are very, very important, and I agree. But we need to have fast track. We need to be at the table. We're going to the table. We need to go over there with full authority. So Ambassador, I hope and trust we can get there. I'll share a little bit more frustration. This Secretary of Agriculture came to our ag committee last year, and whatever it was, he gets beckoned on a regular basis and somebody said how come you're not pushing fast track. He's pushing fast track. He said this committee can't even agree on it.

And I fell back to a couple years ago when I was walking over to the capitol with Chairman Smith and The Hill, one of the papers, says that (inaudible) house agricultural committee of 50 members said that there was only 13 that were supporting fast track. And I said to Bob, I said, it cannot be true. And he said, I think it's off. He said, I think there's only 12. And so there's some real problems there, and you think about the farmers around the Canadian border and out in California and Florida and so on. There's some things that has to be worked out. We need fast track authority. And just to make it a wee bit better, when it comes up for a vote, this Congressman's voting for it. A lot of people came up to me and asked why are we holding this meeting in Des Moines today when there's other things more important than agricultural to do. Aren't there more important things to do? Let me affirm. This is important. This is extremely important.

Now, this hearing and the upcoming Seattle Round of the WTO are critical to our success of our family farmers, and it couldn't be more timely. The goals for American agricultural this round are clear. We must expand and improve market access to agricultural products. We must eliminate unfair exports subsidies, and we must tighten (inaudible) from domestic support. I agree. We have to come up with a substantial infusion this year, and I know our Secretary understands that and a lot of us do. I certainly do. We have to do it on the short term. 5.9 billion, that's not pocket change we did last October. But we need to do something similar and probably more sometime during this year as far as American farmers and producers, and I'll be very supportive of that. But we need solutions.

The negotiations we are about to take place in are vitally important, and since the hearing will deal with the strategy the U.S. will pursue with these negotiations, let me make one suggestion. If there are ways from our trading partners to reduce agricultural tariffs and subsidies before the Seattle Round nears its conclusion, I suggest that we make it clear, that we make it clear that agriculture is a U.S. priority that must be addressed first. We should not allow our trade partners to reach agreements with other sectors of trade without making a deal on agriculture.

The benefits of these negotiations are clear. One needs to look no further than the remarkable achievements of some of the other negotiations of the WTO for trade and industrial goods which is vitally important to see how important this round of negotiations could be to our agriculture program.

Since the end of World War II, eight rounds of negotiations, if I understand it correctly, have reduced the average bound tariff on industrial goods from 40 percent to about 4. He agrees. Meanwhile, bound agricultural tariffs are being very, very high. That's not right. And we have got to do that. We have got to give the man the tools as well. So Iowa breeders are currently suffering from the worse possible commodity prices in decades. These prices are due in large -- and as the Secretary told us even worse than about four months ago. He said unprecedented overproduction. He sent his people off to sell in Europe or wherever and they walk up to them on the streets (inaudible), and they say, well, excuse me. We want to sell to you. And so we've got a real predicament which makes it very, very hard, and I don't understand that. But that's one of the factors. But it's ridiculous that we reward producers -- that the reward producers receive for becoming more and more efficient is to be put out of business. So opening markets and assuring fair trade among our partners will be a great step to meet our needs.

In closing I'd just like to say that there are many areas of agricultural trade that will be discussed during these negotiations, particularly in biotechnology. In a May 1998 WTO statement the President also addressed the need to develop regulations rooted in science during the negotiations. I could not agree more. And whether we clarify existing rules or agree to new rules for biotech, our opponents will attempt to expand those rules to allow for measures that are not based on science, and that is unacceptable. On this point we must remain united. The WTO member countries must continue to base regulations on scientific principles and a science-based assessment of risk. Scare tactics and other arguments of regulators based on fear are just unacceptable.

Now, I would like to say that our Governor Tom Vilsack, which I appreciate very much, and he stayed to listen to me a few too many times in the past, but I appreciate him, but he wants Iowa to be the food capital of the world. And why not? We are blessed with 25 percent, I understand, of the world's topsoil, the best there can be. In some places in this state we measure topsoil in inches, but there are a lot of places in this state we measure it in feet. And if the good Lord has given it to us, why wouldn't we expect to be the food capital of the world.

The upcoming round of negotiations will go on to make that reality. And I challenge our negotiators to make agriculture the top priority. So thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Ambassador Scher, for coming to Iowa. I look forward to working with you. I know you've got your heart in the right place. We cannot fail. We have to succeed. Thank you.