Chuck Grassley: “I wish to make clear I am a believer in a safety net for farmers. We are going to maintain that safety net. So I hope…”

“I wish to make clear I am a believer in a safety net for farmers. We are going to maintain that safety net. So I hope people will ignore that suggested goal. I think it is important to understand that farm programs have been around since the 1930s. They have been around as a safety net because farmers are at the beginning of the food chain or, you might say, at the bottom of the food chain. We have a situation where farmers for input, for producing a crop--producing the food our consumers eat--pay what is charged for those imports. They might bargain a little bit, but they don't have control; they have to buy the imports or they aren't in farming. When they sell their products, they have to sell what the market bears for the day they choose to sell. They might choose a different day to sell, but eventually, whatever they sell for is what the market is there; a farmer is not bargaining for that market. So smaller farmers don't have the ability to withstand things beyond their control, such as a natural disaster or domestic policy such as, let's say, Nixon freezing beef prices, ruining the beef farmers, or stopping the exports of soybeans so that they fall from $13 a bushel to $3 a bushel.”