Karen Bass: “I regret the fact that the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] and I and other folks that are from the North are…”

“I regret the fact that the gentleman from Connecticut [Mr. Shays] and I and other folks that are from the North are supporting this amendment. Global warming is really going to have to take off before we see too much peanuts in Delaware or Connecticut or New Hampshire or New York. But I also find it difficult, as a newcomer here, to believe that in this day and age we have quotas in effect in this country that are so strict that we set the price at more than double in the United States than it is anywhere else in the world. I would say that, although this 1930's system was intended to help American farmers, the peanut program in fact is having the opposite effect on small peanut farmers. As my colleagues may know, the current quota system forces, as the gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Shays said, 68 percent of these farmers to expend a tremendous amount of their operating capital to rent these quotas. In addition, the cost of the seeds which are also set, bought artificially, that inflates the quota price as well. These farmers tend to be small operators who are unable to purchase the land as a result of the economic constraints on the system. Essentially, the Federal Government has mandated a sharecropping system that insulates the quota owners from any market fluctuations. This is not what the 104th Congress is all about. This is a bill that--or an amendment that everybody should support if they believe in anything anywhere close to the free-market system.”