71 



to get out of the Federal crop disaster business altogether, and 

 move toward a much improved crop insurance system, providing 

 each individual producer with his own risk management tool to vol- 

 untarily use or not use and be assured of recovery when he or she 

 has a loss regardless of whether it is a national loss or what the 

 politics of that particular time might be. Is there any disagreement 

 here on this panel that that really is what ultimately we ought to 

 be trying to go to? 



Mrs. Hendricks. True. 



Mr. Johnson. I think that there is a consensus, that while the 

 disaster bill is of enormous benefit to a lot of people right now, 

 given the urgency of the problem, I sense — and this is a statement 

 more than a question — a frustration over the ad hoc approach that 

 we currently use; that it is politically driven, that we seem to 

 reinvent the bureaucracy and the administrative machinery each 

 time we do this; each time it is done a bit differently. 



It is confusing, always involves some inequity, and I think there 

 is a sense among farmers themselves that we would be better off 

 to get away from that approach. Instead of doing crop insurance 

 and disaster programs both and doing them both badly, that we 

 would be better off to do one program and do it well, even under- 

 standing that political temptations to do crop disaster bills will al- 

 ways be with us. It only takes a major nationwide flood or large 

 regional flood or a drought during a Presidential primary year in 

 Iowa to generate a lot of interest in augmenting crop insurance 

 with still an additional ad hoc disaster program. But so long as we 

 do those, they will undermine the willingness of people to sign up 

 for crop insurance programs. 



Granted, in many of our States, the existing crop insurance pro- 

 gram has a low sign-up rate, because partly out of people being 

 convinced that a disaster bill is coming down the way, but also sim- 

 ply because for many people it just doesn't pencil out very well. So 

 it would involve a concerted effort on the part of this subcommittee 

 and on the part of Glenn English's subcommittee in particular to 

 perfect a better crop insurance program. 



I am certainly hopeful that the House Agriculture Committee 

 will take the message to heart that members of this panel have ex- 

 pressed, and at least in the context of the 1995 farm bill, if not 

 sooner, take up an issue that should have been resolved, frankly, 

 in the 1990 farm bill and was not. It is always harder to figure out 

 how to provide better benefits for less money. But nonetheless, 

 tackle that more aggressively than has been done in the past. 



I know that Chairman English is convinced that that is the route 

 that we need to go, and that Congress, once we arrive at that solu- 

 tion, needs to show enough political courage to say that that is our 

 response to disasters, and that is that. That is a big order. But 

 hopefully, we can arrive at that point. 



Mr. Pomeroy, do you have any questions or comments? 



Mr. Pomeroy. I would like to give this panel the opportunity to 

 comment on the issue of quality discount compensation in the con- 

 text of the disaster program. I believe all of you were in the room 

 when it was discussed among panel members earlier. Do any of you 

 think the disaster program available for 1993 losses would have 

 been fair or even minimally adequate if it had not accounted for 



