Political Quotes

“I respect the gentleman's desire to cut, squeeze, and trim and be a deficit hawk, but I think you are really cutting the wrong area. There are a lot of statistical departments in the Department of Agriculture because it is involved with a lot of different issues, sort of the whole rural economics of America, all the trade issues. You have got two departments. You have got one that does the big data and one that does the small data. You are a doctor of medicine, and it would be like comparing an MRI to a thermometer. They both are diagnostic tools but they don't do the same things. And neither does ERS or NAS. You stated they seem like they duplicate. No, they are both involved in economic research, and I don't know how to explain it all, but it is the underlying data that drives everything, drives all the markets, drives decisionmaking. The growers are private sector capitalists, if you will, having to borrow from a banking system. They all have to have good data in order to make decisions. {time} 1545 I think, if you squeeze and trim these economic data collectors, you are really hurting the underlying economy of agriculture in the United States, so I would oppose your amendment. We need crop data. We need market data. We need nutritional data. We need rural economy data, and these are the agencies, particularly the ERS that you are cutting, that collects that, so I oppose the amendment.”