Sam Brownback: “we just received this from the Department of Justice. They state in the first paragraph: The Department of Justice…”

“we just received this from the Department of Justice. They state in the first paragraph: The Department of Justice strongly opposes the amendment. To read their summation sentence, which I do not think is fair, given the detail and the work the Senator from Iowa has gone into on this, and substantial changes that he has made--we have been reviewing his amendment. I have the amendment. But in the DOJ summary sentence, they state this: However, DOJ believes certain provisions included in the amendment would not accomplish its stated goal of protecting rural communities and family farms and ranches, but instead would unnecessarily duplicate existing collaboration efforts, increase costs and uncertainty and may hinder effective antitrust enforcement and harm competition in agriculture and other industries. Therefore DOJ strongly opposes the amendment. Then they go on further to develop the points they have here. As I said, I appreciate the modifications the Senator from Iowa has made. I can tell you in my State, and in the cattle industry, they view this as hurting the price that they are going to be able to get for cattle is the bottom line issue. They view this as driving up substantially their legal costs, and most farmers do not like to have any legal costs, let alone having a number of legal costs.…”