Liz Saville Roberts: “Well, we can probably discuss the baseline, which, to all listening and watching this debate, is not what Cal Ripken…”

“Well, we can probably discuss the baseline, which, to all listening and watching this debate, is not what Cal Ripken runs around, and we can run around our own baselines in regards to the budget, if we so choose. But let me simply say that when the gentleman brings that up, I am always interested in the gentleman from North Dakota [Mr. Pomeroy] and others on that side who have indicated that we are really cutting all of these funds for agriculture and we are making a significant contribution to the deficit. Of course, you are also complaining that we are spending too much and also at the wrong time and with the wrong folks. So you are trying to have it, I guess, both ways. But we are losing $8 billion, already did, in the first baseline, and we would lose another 6, and that is the money available to agriculture in March if we do not move and pass a bill. Somewhere we are going to save about $5.6 billion in this ag budget, which is our contribution to a balanced budget. That adds up, if we do not move and pass the Freedom to Farm Act to guarantee these market transition payments, to about $20 billion. Now, you know, my colleagues across the aisle have given many, many speeches, as I have, on how much we have given in agriculture. But then when we find out that we end up with policy rubble on our hands with the continuation of the current policies, they are strangely silent.”