WALLY HERGER: “One of the richest agriculture areas in the world, second largest rice producing district. Some 60 percent of all the…”

“One of the richest agriculture areas in the world, second largest rice producing district. Some 60 percent of all the dried plums in the world, prunes, are grown there, walnuts, almonds, these specialty crops. And America cannot consume all that we produce. As a matter of fact, one-third of all that we produce we need to be able to export. And to be able to see, again, talking about Colombia, what this does for American workers, we just heard about Caterpillar from our good friend from Illinois just earlier in his district, the thousands that it affects. And so it affects in the district I represent. Right now, because of our duty free status for the Andean nations, which we've gone in to try to help Colombia, Colombia was not always this great nation where some 42,000 former paramilitary have gone from fighting the country to now being part of the country and supporting them. As we know, it wasn't always that way. And so some years ago we gave these Andean nations, including Colombia, Peru, Panama, and others, the ability to be able to export into the United States duty free, duty free, but yet we still have export duties, some as high as 60, 70 percent, going into their country.”