Mark Pryor: “I rise to talk about the farm bill. Ten days, that is all the time we have to work out some agreement on our farm…”

“I rise to talk about the farm bill. Ten days, that is all the time we have to work out some agreement on our farm legislation before we revert to the 1949 farm policy in this country. Let me make this very clear to the American people and to my colleagues. This has nothing to do with the traditional battle lines in agriculture. This is not one of those Midwest farming versus Southern farming type scenarios. This is not a specialty crop versus a row crop type issue. This has nothing to do with that at all. It is an ideological fight, where we see hyperpartisanship and gridlock politics taking over the Congress. Today, the House of Representatives has a vote. It is a very important vote. What they are proposing is that they cut $40 billion from the nutrition title over 10 years. That is $40 billion. Here again, this is not about a traditional fight that you see and you have seen for decades in agriculture. This is about hunger in America. It is a sad fact. It is something that maybe people in this building do not like to acknowledge. But we have people who are hungry in this country. They may be people with whom we go to church. They may be our neighbors. They may be friends, coworkers, folks with whom we graduated from high school. They could be seniors or children or the working poor. But we have people in this country who are hungry today.…”