Jeff Flake: “You know, when we pass legislation like this, 1,700 pages, barely have time to print it, let alone read it, we are going…”

“You know, when we pass legislation like this, 1,700 pages, barely have time to print it, let alone read it, we are going to have problems like this. Let me just mention a couple of the problems and issues that have come up over the last couple of days when we have been trying to deal with this legislation. Our office found out just a couple of days ago after the bill had already passed that there was another subsidy program actually added to the bill during the conference that was not part of the House bill and was not part of the Senate bill. This is potentially a massive, massive liability for the taxpayers. According to the Department of Agriculture, this could mean as much as $16 billion, in addition to everything else in the bill, additional liability for the taxpayers annually. We don't know much about this program at all. All we know is that for years now the farming community has been upset that they haven't been able to collect money off the countercyclical program and the loan deficiency payment program because prices have been so high. So this new program was put in so the threshold would be much higher at which subsidies kicked in.”