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ity Title program for 21^st century production agriculture and offers only minimal reforms amounting to about $4 billion in savings to the $800 billion food stamp program. The Commodity Title of this year's Senate bill included a new program called Adverse Market Payments which uses outdated counter-cyclical payments calculated using high fixed target prices that overwhelmingly benefit rice and peanuts. The addition of this new program, at a cost of more than $3 billion to taxpayers, was completely against the wishes of South Dakota farmers, and a huge step backward from the reforms we passed last year. The inclusion of this program and the minimal reforms in the Nutrition Title are major factors contributing to my no vote on this bill.
• Prior to passage, I offered two amendments on the Senate Floor that would have eliminated the outdated target price program and made modest reforms to save taxpayer dollars within the food stamp program. However, out of more than 240 amendments that were filed on the Senate floor, only 14 received votes. This procedural decision to minimize amendment votes left me without an opportunity to make improvements to the Farm Bill, and is yet another reason I could not support the legislation.
• While I was unable to vote for the 2013 Senate Farm Bill, the legislation still has a number of steps before becoming law, and I will take every opportunity to make it a better Farm Bill for South Dakota prior to final passage.