Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I strongly support this rule and the underlying legislation to repeal country of origin labeling for meat products, and I believe this effort is long past due. I thank the chairman of the Rules Committee for bringing this rule to the floor, and I appreciate Agriculture Committee Chairman Conaway's expeditious response to the WTO's final ruling that sets the table for a huge hit to America's struggling economy. Not only has COOL been a costly burden on our Nation's meat industry for more than a decade, but now massive retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico will inflict pain on a vast amount of U.S. industries and jobs. At a time when American GDP is actually shrinking, and U.S. farmers and manufacturers are desperately seeking export markets, the worst thing we can do is allow this policy to damage our ability to get American-made to market. COOL represents yet another failed government mandate imposing heavy costs on private sector industry for no defensible purpose. While the primary goal of COOL is to give American-grown meat a competitive advantage, the result has been exactly the opposite. Even the Department of Agriculture agrees that COOL has actually negatively impacted the industry that it was supposed to benefit.…”