Political Quotes

“I come to the floor today to speak about justice and the Department of Agriculture. Let me go back a few years. Though civil rights legislation in the 1960s was supposed to have outlawed racial discrimination, at least on the Federal level, a 1982 report issued by the Civil Rights Commission stated that the USDA was "a catalyst in the decline of the black farmer." That year, African-American farmers received only 1 percent of all farm ownership loans, only 2.5 percent of all farm-operating loans, and only 1 percent of all soil and water conservation loans. That year, too, the Reagan administration closed the USDA's Civil Rights Office-- the very arm that investigated discrimination complaints. Adding insult to injury, when African-American and other minority farmers filed complaints, the USDA did little to address them. In 1983, President Reagan pushed through budget cuts that eliminated the USDA Office of Civil Rights--and officials admitted they "simply threw discrimination complaints in the trash without ever responding to or investigating them" until 1996, when President Clinton ordered the office re-opened.”