Political Quotes

“opponents of this program claim that no changes were made in the 1996 farm bill, but that of course is not true. The fact is Congress has made major reforms to the sugar program in the 1996 farm bill, and this would be evident by looking at this chart, which my colleagues can see each of the sections with the red lines marked through it have been eliminated. That part of the program is gone. Over here we have new sugar policy, the reform policy. Let me tell my colleagues that the sugar program is really protection at the border for the sugar industry in America. Without that protection we will have no sugar industry, and the world price of sugar is not what people say it is. That is the dump sugar price and should be called that. The people who want to reduce the cost of sugar do not care if we have a sugar industry, they do not care if farmers in America continue to grow sugar. We have already reduced the cost of sugar with the 1996 program changes, and it will probably go down again, and we have said when other countries who subsidize their sugar quit subsidizing their sugar we will reduce the tariffs that protect the American sugar farmer. Protection at the border, that is what we have. There are no checks to the Fanjuls, there are no government checks to anyone. There is no government program subsidy; that is misleading, intentionally misleading.”