Madam Speaker, in terms of the hog and livestock industry, the safety net program, agristability, needs to be changed so that it will work for those commodities that have lost their margins. It is allowable under the trade agreements. I do not understand it. Last year the government could have put out $900 million to the farm community that way, but it failed to do it.
It is a complicated area, but all the government needs to do is change the viability test and the way the reference margins are calculated. That can be put over three good years, or over a longer period of time, so that it would trigger a payment. That is where the government goes seriously wrong. The government believes that our farmers can do it on their own.
The European Union and the United States stand up for their primary producers. In fact, in the United States, between 1995 and 2009, there was $245.2 billion paid out to the farm communities. The White House this year recognized there was a problem in some of the commodities and recently announced a new disaster aid program, which would cost an estimated $1.5 billion annually. The United States stands up for its farm community.
This government is allowing our farmers to go under. The only thing farmers are coming first in with this government is first in debt. Our debt of $64 billion is roughly four and a half times per farmer what it is in the United States. It is unacceptable.