Political Quotes

“I submit that the Justice Department has said no matter what we move to do in USDA, they have got the final word. We can go through the administrative process all we want and resolve these cases, but they are going to look at each one of them and they are going to determine whether or not they will let it go through and will let these payments be made. I really do believe that the Secretary is doing the best that he can do and he is acting in good faith. I do not think that Secretary Glickman ever anticipated that some lawyer sitting over in DOJ would have the audacity to stop these payments. Because as we all understood, and the Secretary thought, when all is said and done, once the Secretary signs off: Done. None of us anticipated that DOJ would interfere in the way that they are doing. And so we have now 864 cases still to be resolved. All of the work that you have been doing for the time that you have been in Congress, only 224 have been resolved. It is planting season and we have farmers that are bare. In this 864 have been waiting 10, 15, 20 years. We have people who have died waiting. We have people who have had heart attacks who have died brokenhearted waiting for their government to look at these cases to investigate them, to give them just a modicum of justice. And so let me just say to all of my colleagues, despite this difficulty, I cannot use a better example than Winnie Mandela when they had to confront the past laws of an apartheid system.…”