Tom Harkin: “I thank particularly the family members of these individuals, the spouses, significant others, the children. I know they…”

“I thank particularly the family members of these individuals, the spouses, significant others, the children. I know they haven't seen spouses, loved ones, parents, father and mother, in this case, for some time because of the long hours we have worked. Sometimes when Members would go until 9 or 10 at night, we went home. Staff stayed until 1 or 2 in the morning to clean up the mess we made and do all the paperwork and get us ready for the next day. I particularly thank their families. I close by saying my special thanks to my ranking member and my good friend Senator Lugar from Indiana. I know we disagree on this bill, but there are a lot of things on which we do agree. There are a lot of things we worked very closely on when we developed the bill in committee. I look forward to working with him in the future. This is not the last farm bill. This is not the end of what we will do to address the needs of rural America and our people who live there. I look forward to working with Senator Lugar. As I said, we may have a disagreement, but I echo what someone said the other day: Senator Lugar has been from the beginning intellectually honest and forthright in his approach on this farm bill. No one can fault that. We just see it differently; that is all. But he has been a great friend. He has helped move the process forward. Even though he didn't agree with the bill, he wanted to make sure the process moved forward.”