Political Quotes

“Mr. President, as the two Chambers prepare to go to conference on the farm bill, I rise to request a commitment from the distinguished chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee to protect the Senate farm bill's vital provision to end direct payments outright. While I commend the chairwoman for her leadership in facilitating the full and immediate elimination of direct payments in the Senate-passed farm bill, many of my colleagues may be surprised to learn that section 1101 of the House-passed farm bill contains a carve-out that would actually continue direct payments to cotton farmers at a rate of 70 percent in 2014 and a rate of 60 percent in 2015. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this House-passed extension of direct payments would cost taxpayers an estimated $823 million. Already a poster child for Federal largesse, direct payments have more recently become synonymous with waste, fraud, and abuse. As the Washington Post put it, recent analyses of the program have found that it subsidizes people who aren't really farming: the idle, the urban, and, occasionally, the dead. Investigations have uncovered taxpayer-backed direct payments being paid to billionaires, to New York City condo dwellers, and to nonfarming homeowners who happen to live on former farmlands.…”