Political Quotes

“I rise in disagreement with the Senator from Pennsylvania. I do not want to prolong this, so I will make a brief statement. I assume the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania was speaking of the amendment he had at the desk, No. 4962, which was the prohibition on purchase of quota peanuts for domestic feeding programs. I assume that is what he had. He was talking about the School Lunch Program. As I understand it, he was saying that, because of the program, the Government has to pay twice the world price--twice as much for peanuts that go to the School Lunch Program and other programs that the Government might be involved in. Unfortunately, I believe that the distinguished Senator is not really familiar with the School Lunch Program and the other USDA commodity distribution programs. We have a chart here that I will point out briefly, which is based upon USDA calculations. This chart here is designed to show the manufacturer's cost, based on USDA figures, of two jars of peanut butter, both being the same size, both being generic. This chart shows that the manufacturers are able to make and sell peanut butter to the USDA School Lunch Program at 81 cents a pound. Yet, consumers at the market would pay $1.87 a pound. Eighty-one cents doubled is $1.62. So already when you have a program by which the manufacturers, in effect, bid against each other for the school lunch purchases, it ends up that there are considerable savings.”