Dave Camp: “Our sugar policy was reformed in the 1996 farm bill, Mr. Chairman, which many speakers have mentioned. But I know our…”

“Our sugar policy was reformed in the 1996 farm bill, Mr. Chairman, which many speakers have mentioned. But I know our opponents also say that they rely on this discredited GAO report claiming that U.S. sugar is overpriced. They constantly cite this 1993 report. The authors of this flawed report based their entire analysis on a faulty assumption. They assumed that without a sugar policy, U.S. consumers could pay an outrageously low world price of 14 cents a pound for sugar. They failed to mention that the world price was a dump price, the price sugar-exporting countries get for dumping their highly-subsidized sugar on world markets. The world dump price for sugar is hopelessly flawed and cannot be used as a gauge for measuring sugar's cost. Even the USDA says the GAO report was "* * * flawed in its estimates, and important data and market issues were not considered." The USDA also said, "Using different world price estimates, it can be shown using GAO's methodology that there are no costs to domestic users and consumers." Oppose the Miller-Schumer amendment.”