Political Quotes

“I come to the floor to discuss the State of our economy and to give suggestions on how to improve it. But before I go to the main purpose of why I came here, I wish to say to the Senator from Maryland that I agree with him. The House of Representatives ought to take up a farm bill. I hope they will, and that is my urging. I also wish to take advantage of the opportunity to explain a little bit about ethanol and how that works in with the situation he brought up about increasing feed for chickens or any other animals. This year, farmers planted 96 million acres of corn. There were more acres of corn planted than in any other year since 1938. Most of that is because of the ethanol industry. If we didn't have the ethanol industry, we would normally plant somewhere between 80 and 85 million acres of corn. Let's assume we never heard of the word ``ethanol'' or the product ethanol, that it didn't even exist, and farmers planted the usual 80 to 85 million acres of corn. Let's also assume we had the same drought we had this year--over about two-thirds of the United States--and the corn crop is going to be reduced because of it. If we planted 80 to 85 million acres of corn and we had the same drought, we would still have the high price of grain we have right now, but we wouldn't have ethanol to blame for it. So the marketplace is bringing about the increased production of corn because of feed, fuel, and fiber.…”