Thank you Madam Chairman for that kind introduction, and thank you for inviting me to testify before this subcommittee here today. As a part-time farmer from down the road in Harnett County, I welcome this subcommittee to the Second Congressional District.

I wish I could say it was a pleasure to be here. Unfortunately, the fact that you, I, and everyone are here this morning is indicative of the painful truth that Congress has not yet enacted tobacco buyout legislation, and time is quickly running out.

Last July, the full U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, on which I serve, held a hearing to hear testimony from tobacco growers, tobacco companies, and the health community on the need for a tobacco buyout.

The focus of this hearing that you are having today is why a buyout is critically important to rural communities.

Madam Chairman, I applaud you for using this hearing to broaden the scope of this important issue. During the past several years that I have been working on buyout legislation, I have been making the case that a buyout touches more than just farmers, quota holders and the tobacco companies.

A buyout - or even more importantly, the failure to pass a buyout - would impact banks, agri-businesses, rural towns, and county governments. The entire economic infrastructure of rural North Carolina could be transformed by the billions of dollars of investment from buyout payments.

This hearing and the testimony you will hear later today will put a human face on the broader benefits a buyout brings and the consequences of inaction. I commend you for holding it.

I also want to talk briefly about buyout efforts in the House. During this Congress alone, five tobacco buyout bills have been introduced in the House of Representatives.

These bills differ widely in how much to pay farmers and quota holders, who would be eligible for buyout payments, and whether there would be any safety net for farmers in a post-buyout world. Unfortunately, none of them have gotten anywhere.

And everyone here wants to know, why can't we pass a buyout? They want to know how Congress can pass a bill to give Iraq billions of dollars, but somehow cannot find some money to help out North Carolina farm families who are hurting through no fault of their own.

I believe, and would think you and Congressman Burr would agree, that the single biggest obstacle to passing buyout legislation is the lack of political leadership at the highest levels.

A leadership, for one reason or another, that cannot help members from tobacco producing states answer our most difficult question, how to pay for a buyout.

The Senate buyout plan introduced by Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell and yourself, Madam Chairman, answers this question with an assessment to be paid by the tobacco companies.

This is similar to the user fee approach in a buyout bill introduced last year by myself and then-Congressman Ernie Fletcher. Unfortunately, both of our plans for paying for a buyout came under fierce attack by those who characterized it as a tax increase.

I believe these attacks against you and your approach for paying for a buyout were patently unfair. As your office so succinctly put it, "assessments against the cigarette-makers are not a tax."

With our country facing a $521 billion deficit, finding a budget neutral way to pay for a buyout, I believe, strengthens our argument for passing a bill this year.

The Jenkins tobacco buyout bill, mentioned by Congressman Burr, would pay for a buyout by using five cents of the current tobacco excise tax. However, this approach has faced heavy criticism from the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The Speaker said he would not support using the excise tax to pay for the buyout because "we're not going to add on to the deficit."

Some authors of the Jenkins buyout even publicly acknowledged that the House Republican leadership has told them that the $7 and $3 the bill provides is too generous to tobacco farmers and quota holders, a notion I know everyone in this room finds unbelievable.

So, if we cannot raise excise taxes, if user fees and assessments are not acceptable, and leadership opposes using current excise taxes, what else is left to us? The situation of tobacco farmers has deteriorated so badly and for so long, that they desperately need the relief that a buyout offers, regardless of the source.

In my view, a buyout must have two components. One, it must fairly compensates the farm families and quota holders whose lives have been uprooted by the economic calamity we have faced these many years.

And two, it must be able to get the votes necessary to pass Congress, be signed by the President, and get the checks out to the families who need them.

If a buyout meets these criteria, I will support it regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican wrote it (pause), regardless of who would get the credit if we should succeed in passing it. I can tell you, the people in this room don't care about such things.

Anything else is just window dressing. Our focus should remain on helping North Carolina's farm families and making sure they aren't forgotten once again. The tobacco companies have plenty of friends to protect their interests in Washington. My focus is on the farmer as I know is yours, Madam Chairman.

North Carolina is fortunate to have you engaged on this issue in the Senate. Our state is also lucky enough to have farm leaders, who have been fighting for a buyout for years.

Keith Parrish, one of my constituents and a former president of the North Carolina Tobacco Growers Association, has been one of the first and strongest advocates for a buyout both here and in Washington.

Larry Wooten and his Farm Bureau team have been instrumental in bringing attention to our plight among national agricultural groups.

Bruce Flye and his Stabilization Team have been working to broaden support for a buyout among the health groups.

And Sam Crews, the current North Carolina Tobacco Growers Association president has kept up the faith of his members who, after facing year after year of disappointment, have almost given up hope.

I look forward to reviewing their testimony and the remarks of the other witnesses to find new arguments, new facts, new tools that we can bring to bear in the fight to win a buyout.

Tobacco farmers and quota holders are just barely hanging on the edge of a cliff by their fingertips. This December, when the tobacco community faces a possible 33% cut in quota, will there be a net to catch them?

It has been my top priority for the past four years to make sure that net is there. Working together, we can put in place a buyout that will catch the farmers that fall off.

But we need to do it this year, because we may not get another chance next year.

Again, thank you for allowing me to testify today. I will be happy to answer any questions the Subcommittee has.

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