Political Quotes

“Madam President, at this point I want to take a moment before we vote today to recognize folks who have worked so hard to get us to this point. First of all, I thank my colleagues in advance for coming together one more time and leading for rural America--for farmers, for ranchers, for the 16 million people who have jobs because of agriculture in this country. It has been a long road for the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act, and I have been blessed and pleased to have a wonderful partner and ranking member, the distinguished Senator from Mississippi. He has been a partner every step of the way, and I thank him and look forward--as the House hopefully this time will complete their work--to having the opportunity to go to conference and crafting an agreement we can then present back to the Senate. I can't thank Senator Cochran and his staff enough for their wonderful partnership. We started this last year. We had 3 weeks that the farm bill was on the floor of the Senate. We had 73 votes, adopted 42 amendments, and we took that as the basis for the bill this year. Once the House did not take up the bill--and, in my judgment, walked away from rural America last year--we had to come back and do it again, so we used the work product the Senate did last year as the basis of our work, and we had 2 weeks of debate on the floor of the Senate. We have added 14 more amendments to the bill that is in front of us.…”