Contacting Members of Congress

The letter on this page was written by Randy Cook, President of NORM. This letter was sent to one of his Senators from Michigan. This is a very factual letter and very well written.

AAM leadership encourages everyone to write letters to your Senators and Congressmen from your state.

Write letters in your own words, keep it factual, short and to the point. Urge your neighbors to do the same thing.

We constantly hear from members of Congress that things must be OK in the rural areas because they do not hear from farmers any more.

Things are not OK and we need more than ever to let them know just how difficult it really is in the country.

Writing Letters to your Congressmen

The following is a letter to Senator Debbie Stabenow from Michigan. It is a good example of a letter that everyone should consider writing to their Senators and Representatives. It was written by Randy Cook , President of NORM. When you write, use your own words and let them know how you feel about the job they are doing in D.C.

12 December 2001

Dear Senator Stabenow,

Your vote regarding the proposed farm bill, whatever form appears before the Senate, will be recorded. You will be demonstrating your concern for Ag producers through your vote. Those Ag producers also vote. Please make that one of your concerns as well.

I keep trying to think of what might be said to communicate to you the information you vitally need for coming to grips with the economic situation in which we find ourselves. These conditions can be remedied. The nation’s economic condition can be righted and moved to a sustainable, growing basis by understanding what has brought us to this situation and what we have come through as a nation.

You and your colleagues in the Senate, and those in the House as well, in your best efforts to do what is best for our country, act out of your beliefs. You vote aye for what you believe will achieve the best ends, and nay on those items you believe will divert or damage those national achievements.

In all this you act from your beliefs. It is much to be preferred that you act from understanding. Beliefs may or may not have solid basis in the observed facts of the situation. Understanding always has a solid base in the facts.

Some of the facts of our national economy (year 2000 government figures) are these: portion of National Income spent on imported goods ............................ 15.6%

This means we are dependent on foreign suppliers for this much of our domestic needs. We are only 84.4% self-sufficient. The last time our economy was in a balanced condition (1946-1950) that portion was 3.3%. At that time we were 96.7% self-sufficient.

Increase of wages + interest since 1946-1950 ........................................ 4338.1%

This is the “cost” side of our National Income. In the last balanced economic period the ratio of “cost” to “income”. in the National Income calculation was 2 to 1. That means that the National Income should also have risen about 4338%. However, increase of National Income since 1946-1950 ....................................... 3642.5%

Meaning we are not generating sufficient income to purchase our own production at our own prices. This explains why importation of goods in lieu of our own producers is rising. Other figures indicate the same condition. Increase of income of Private Enterprise (corporate profits after taxes + small business income + net farm income) since 1946-1950 .................................... 2355.5%

Again, our income is insufficient and not rising as rapidly as our costs. Further indications are increase of gross farm income since 1946-1950 ....................................... 587%

Even with the National Income shortage it has still risen more than 6 times faster than the gross income of farmers. Even more telling is Increase of net farm income since 1946-1950 .......................................... 102.6%

Do you wonder that there is a problem in agriculture? Here is the explanation. If inflation were squeezed from the numbers used in the calculations above, net farm income would be lower now than during the Great Depression.

These are indisputable facts. Here is another: income is generated through production times price. From this earned income (production xprice) we, as a nation, must be able to pay our bills, feed ourselves, build our homes and offices, manufacture our durables, save our profits for future needs and current investment and not generate capital debt on an annual basis. The last time we accomplished this was 50 years ago.

But this is what our nation has been reaching for since its founding. For the last 50 years we have been needlessly ruining the economic conditions that lead to enhanced development of our civil society. The piper will be paid. It is falling to me and you to make that payment. How do you plan to do it? With more easy credit, with more destruction of our own productive people and plant and equipment through excessive imports? The facts of the situation are screaming at you from the numbers presented to you month by month (Economic Indicators) that you apparently don’t know how to interpret.

National income is generated by the efforts of private enterprise. Private enterprise is founded, now and forever, on agriculture. We all must eat to work and work to eat. The gross farm dollar determines, as a fact, the earned national income. The gross farm dollar is production times price. We are already making the production. When the price is too low, we lack sufficient national income to purchase our annual production and we must resort to capital debt. The public and private debt must be paid out of earnings by private enterprise, including the interest. The more we borrow, the faster grows what we owe and the farther out into the future we push the promise of repayment. We now have promised that our great-grandchildren will repay what we have already spent but didn’t work to earn. They must earn it. That is an abominable legacy.

In rendering the next farm bill you will make the call whether this nation chooses to act equitably and “with justice for all,” or deny our heritage and go with the what is before you. That flow is heading us for the drain. What a waste it would be. If you do as expected, the farm bill before you will pass in one form or another that will be absolutely ineffective in stopping the mad dash to the bottom that comes from trying to go “cheap.”

We have a standard of living that we like to think is rising. It is not. Our inflation rate is rising, not the conditions of our schools (supported by taxes on farmland whose owners are the poorest paid workers in this nation) or rural communities. Congress likes to appropriate vast sums for “rural development” because the “need” you see is caused by your cutting off the ability of rural communities to support themselves.

You were elected to the Senate but are you qualified to serve? Do you know how to regulate the value of money? Article I, section 8, clause 5 of the Constitution says it is your responsibility to regulate not only our nation’s money but the value of foreign currency as well. Do you know how to do it? That is what an effective, stabilizing farm bill would accomplish. Make sure the farmer (and every citizen) gets a 100 cent dollar, not a 16 cent dollar. Let the world know that you intend to establish and maintain American production at American prices.

As we buy from other nations we must pay them our price not their price. With the excess above their price they can buy our products. Establish American parity as the world standard. It is the only way we can do for the world what needs doing. American labor values as the world standard and paying our prices for what we need of their production will lift all nations toward our level. Today, with our standard “trade promotion authority,” we dictate depression of our standard to the lowest in the world, starting with farmers.

Much of the world depends on us for their level of income. We should notlet them fall simply because our beliefs prevent us from understanding what is right and proper to do. Does right still make might as Lincoln said, or have we gone the other way?

We know what to do and how to do it. I have legislation prepared and available to establish equitable treatment for agriculture and pprosperity for the nation. It works. My friends say I am silly to be offering this information to you. “Politics will prevail,” whatever that means. We’ll get what Larry Combest and the multinational financial interests and their hired voices want us to get.”

How long can we expect to defend our country militarily if we refuse to defend it economically? What can I say that will communicate some portion of understanding so that your beliefs can rest on solid ground?

Sincerely,

Randy Cook, President

National Organization for Raw Materials