On the recordJuly 25, 2012
Mr. President, I now turn to my colleague from Kansas, and I tell him about one of the families very close to us--my wife grew up with her lifetime friend, who married a farm boy from Kansas. They ran a farm near Norton, KS. We speak with them regularly. Even though we are city people, we have learned from them the sacrifice that goes into maintaining a farm, the suffering that occurs from the whims of the weather, the prices of the crops. We see them struggle and struggle, and this obviously will not be a good year. But this is a farm that has been passed down to the third generation now. They own a lot of land. As the Senator knows, Kansas has a lot of land. And they didn't get the rainfall we did. I know this is a situation that ends the dream that has been passed down from generation to generation because on the death of the current owners of the farm, the tax on that would force them to sell their land.
