Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, administered by the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service, the MAP program uses funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation to aid the development, expansion and maintenance of foreign markets for U.S. agricultural commodities and products. It does so by forming partnerships with nonprofit trade organizations and cooperatives, nonprofit State regional trade groups, small businesses and others to market our products overseas. In a perfect world, if there is a lot of money hanging around to do something, this might be a good thing to do to help these small companies market their products overseas. I would argue that is really not the proper role and function of government, but people could argue when times are good, let's do that. But we are borrowing 40 cents on the dollar. Every dollar that we spend on this kind of thing is borrowed. And we are borrowing money to subsidize companies, small and large, to market their products overseas. A while ago, The New York Times shined some light on this program. They spotlighted the ridiculousness of a fashion show in India put on with taxpayer money in partnership with the cotton industry's Cotton Council International. Here we are subsidizing a fashion show in India in partnership with the Cotton Council International. The article notes that ``over the last decade, the program has provided nearly $2 billion in taxpayer money to agricultural trade associations and farmer cooperatives.…”