Political Quotes

“Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I come to the floor, first, to congratulate this bipartisan effort. I have been through other farm bills I guess a couple of times. I've seen it when we had a Republican chair, a Democrat chair, and a Republican chair. I've seen it as Ranking Member Peterson worked hard with Republicans 6 years ago. And I've seen it as our chairman, Frank Lucas, has worked hard with Ranking Member Peterson over the last year and a half. This is a very, very difficult balance to pull together. But here's what we get with this: first of all, the end of direct payments by the agreement of our producers. Whoever, as a recipient of a government check, stepped forward and said: I'll give that up because economically we can do that. And at the same time, we get some reform in the SNAP side of this thing that says we're going to start holding some people accountable without taking a single calorie out of the mouths of those that are needy and those who we want to get those benefits. And in the middle of all of that, if we don't pass a bill, we revert to the 1949 bill, which would be a calamity. And if we don't address the SNAP version of this, then what we end up with, Madam Chair, is a growing food stamp program. So I urge its adoption.”