Liz Saville Roberts: “Mr. President, the most important thing is to get this emergency assistance out to farmers as fast as we can and keep it…”

“Mr. President, the most important thing is to get this emergency assistance out to farmers as fast as we can and keep it within a realm that is at least reasonable in regard to the budget and in a way the farmer can get the assistance. We can do that in 10 days by the system that is proposed by the Senator from Mississippi. I have already mentioned the payment limitation concern. I must say, if you look at the Harkin amendment, it not only deals with emergency assistance--and Senator Harkin truly believes we ought to rewrite the farm bill, and he is doing that in regard to his amendment. We have peanuts, dairy payments, and livestock payments; and I am assuming most of it would go to the hog producers, but we means test that again. We have set-aside authority and we have disaster funding, where we set aside another $600 million. We backfill the 1998 disaster assistance. Then we have money to establish a permanent program for land that has been flooded for continuous years. With all due respect to my colleagues from the Northern Plains, we have a name for a land in Kansas that has been covered with water for 3 years; it is called a lake. We have millions for tobacco producers. My golly, are we going back to 1982 when we all decided in the House of Representatives--and we were all there at that time--we were going to get the Government out of subsidizing tobacco farmers? Are we back to that? Be careful what you ask for.”