Patsy T. Mink: “we have heard a lot of misstatements today about the sugar program, not only today, but in the discussions that have…”

“we have heard a lot of misstatements today about the sugar program, not only today, but in the discussions that have been held over the years. I think it is really unfortunate that so much of this comes from a theoretical discussion, which is purported to be a government report called the GAO Study. I think that it is important when we look at these studies to look at the response the Department made with respect to each one of the assumptions that were propounded by the GAO report. The most significant of it is this use of the words, ``world price.'' Anyone who has studied this particular issue will know that the world price is nothing more than a dump price. There is no such thing as buying sugar at 8 cents or 9 cents a pound. It is only where the excesses, the surpluses of all of these government programs all over the world have no internal domestic source to sell, then they go out to the world market and they dump it. It is absolutely unfair to talk about our sugar program and relate it to the world dump price.”