Chuck Grassley: “I will speak for a couple minutes in morning business. I am an advocate, through the farm program, of having an absolute…”

“I will speak for a couple minutes in morning business. I am an advocate, through the farm program, of having an absolute limit on the amount of money that one farmer can get from the farm program so that we target toward medium- and small-sized farmers so we don't subsidize very big farmers to get bigger. I got such a legislation through the House and the Senate in previous Congresses, and, would you believe it, even though it was exactly the same language in both Houses and that isn't supposed to be touched by the conferees, the conferees diluted it to not a very meaningful limit. Well, I am still concerned about limits. So today, I come to the floor to say, as one of its last official acts, the Biden Department of Agriculture decided to disregard the wishes of Congress by using its authority under section 5 of the Commodity Credit Corporation's charter to increase payment limits for specialty crop farmers from $125,000 to $900,000 under the Marketing Assistance for Specialty Crops Program. This increase cost American taxpayers over $650 million without a vote of the Congress. Had this been the desire of Congress, it would have been included in the continuing resolution passed just weeks before. Article I of the Constitution is very clear. Congress has the power of the purse. It is time that we stop the abuse of that power by the executive branch, whether that is Republican or Democrat. So getting back to what I said when I opened my remarks.…”