Tom Harkin: “today all across America most people are doing pretty well. Unemployment is at its lowest rate in years. The stock…”

“today all across America most people are doing pretty well. Unemployment is at its lowest rate in years. The stock market keeps going up. Our gross national product is going up at a great rate. As we now know, we have a surplus for the first time in almost 30 years in the Federal budget. We just had a lengthy debate last week on what we are going to do with that surplus. Our friends on the other side want to take most of it and give it, through a tax break, to people mostly in the upper-income brackets. If you just looked at that, you would think we shouldn't be worried too much about what is happening in America; things look pretty good. Out of the glare of Wall Street, far from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, sort of silently and quietly, American farmers and ranchers are losing their businesses. They are at the end of their rope. Our small towns and communities that dot our countryside are facing a bleak winter, with the prospect that things will get even worse after the harvest is in and the snow falls. The situation facing American agriculture today--according to bankers, farm economists, and agricultural economists from many of our universities--is the worst it has been since the Great Depression. We have to respond to that. We have to respond in a way that is meaningful. That is what our first-degree amendment does.”