Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak out on behalf of the Fourth Congressional District of Iowa, which I claim is the number one agriculture-producing congressional district in all of America, and to support this underlying bill, which does a number of good things. I have heard that it provides certainty. When you deal with agriculture, I have some apprehension about that, Mr. Speaker, because certainty in agriculture seems to be an oxymoron to me. But it does provide predictability, and we owe that to our producers, in particular. So it does a number of good things. It sets up the ARC payments so that they will be identified to the physical location of the farm. That corrects an inequity. It has $255 million a year in there for MAP, market access, for foreign market development, for technical assistance, and the Emerging Markets Program. It addresses FMD beyond foreign market developments in another way, and that establishes a vaccine bank for foot and mouth disease, which we anticipate could well be something that could befell the United States. We need to be ready. I encourage also that we develop a GMO vaccine for FMD, so we can produce it in this country in sufficient quantities. This bill allows for that to be developed. Then it also increases the loan guarantees along the line, especially for our young producers, up to $1.75 million, and the direct loans to $400,000, and the direct farm ownership loans to $600,000.…”