Interview with Jim Gransbery of the Billings Gazette in Billings, Montana

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, June 5, 1995

Farm Bill

Mr. Gransbery. - envision sharp reductions in both mandatory and discretionary spending for farm programs and research. To what extent are you willing to go - a veto or whatever - to get a farm bill that adequately meets your funding requirements to protect farmers' income and future research?

The President. I'm willing to go quite a long way. You know, I went to Ames, Iowa, a couple of weeks ago to hold a rural conference to give agricultural interests from around the Middle West a chance to come in and testify on a strictly nonpartisan basis just to say what they thought ought to be done in the farm bill. And I pointed out that we had already put in our budget certain reductions in agricultural supports that were consistent with the GATT agreement we made with Europe and the others, other countries, to try to get everybody to reduce their agricultural supports.

Now, the - and I think the numbers that are in the marks, in the Republican marks are excessive. You know, we might be able to cut some more, but there's a limit to how much we can cut and still be competitive. Up here, you know, you've got special problems. I worked for a very long time to get this agreement last year with the Canadians on wheat to limit imports and then to set up this commission to try to resolve that problem.

But I think that it's a great mistake to look at these farm subsidies just as sort of special Government spending programs instead of looking at them in the context of how we do in international markets. If everybody did away with their protectionism, we wouldn't have to spend a plug nickel on agriculture in America. Our people would do just fine.

And so, I think the proper way to do this is through negotiations with our competitors and to keep driving the subsidies down in a way that opens up markets to our farmers and tries to keep - therefore, have some reasonable relationship of the competitiveness of American agriculture to the incomes people can earn.

If we cut excessively, one or two things, or both, will happen: You will either have substantial losses of American markets - markets for American farmers, or you'll have a lot of individual farmers go under and corporate farms take them over, or both.

So I think it's very important - and Secretary Glickman, the new Agriculture Secretary, as I'm sure you know, was a Congressman from Kansas for 18 years, knows a lot about agriculture. He's out and around the country now talking to farmers, trying to continue to get more ideas about what we can do to put some more flexibility in the farm program that the farmers have asked us for, what we can do to help make more farm income from within the United States by diversifying products and building on the base farm production to develop new products and a lot of that.

But we are still going to have to be very careful, not only about how much farm prices - farm programs are cut but how they're cut. It's not just important to the dollar, but it's also important what form they take if your goal is to preserve productive, competitive family farms. And that's my goal. That's what I think our interest should be. We can't be in the business of propping up somebody that can't do it, but everybody knows that's generally not the problem with American agriculture.

So, that's where we are. And I intend to make a hard fight out of it. And we have some allies in the Congress among the Republicans and the Democrats. I know that the urban Democrats and the suburban Republicans are the majority, but there are some that are sensitive to these issues. And of course, we have some - in the agriculture committees themselves, we've got some folks in both parties that understand these issues. And so I think we'll be able to make some progress there.

Militia Groups

Mr. Gransbery. Sir, are you here in Montana to take on the ideology of the so-called militia and similar anti-Government groups? How serious a threat do you think they really are?

The President. Well, the first answer to your question is no, I'm not here in Montana to do that, although if - that presumably will be a part of my town hall meeting because you've got a strong militia presence here. I'm here because I think it's important that the President explicitly acknowledge and listen to all the concerns that the Mountain West has about - have about the Federal Government. All these concerns have to be listened to.

Now, on the militia movement, I think that the answer is - how much of a threat? It just depends on who you're talking about - what the group is and what they've said and what they're prepared to do. I had a lot of experience with the militia movement 10, 11 years ago in a different incarnation when I was Governor - groups that were - they were then calling themselves survivalists. And we had a tax protester from North Dakota or South Dakota, Gordon Kahl, killed in Arkansas.

Mr. Gransbery. I remember that, yes.

The President. We had another guy, Snell, just executed in Arkansas who killed a pawn shop owner he thought was Jewish, and then killed a black State policeman who was a good friend of mine - shot him down in cold blood.