Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I wish to take a few moments to update folks about what is happening as it relates to the very important effort to pass a 5-year farm bill for our country--for our ranchers, for our farmers, for those who care deeply about nutrition and conservation policy for the country. We have somewhere between 16 and 20 million people who work in this country because of agriculture--the farm bill and food policy--and I am very proud of all the work we did together to pass a bipartisan farm bill. In doing that, we sent a very strong message on a number of fronts that we were committed to economic certainty for our growers. We said we understand the need to have long-term policies in place, and we also sent a message about disaster assistance. I have spoken on the floor before, as my colleagues have, about the very serious situation happening all across our country as it relates to livestock and the broad question now of drought in every region of the country. We also have had areas, in addition to drought in Michigan and other places, where food growers have been hit with an early warming and then a freeze again. So we have had multiple reasons to care about short-term disaster assistance, and I am very proud the bill we passed includes a very good livestock disaster assistance program available for this year which will be very helpful for our livestock producers. We also added provisions for fruit growers that will help those who don't have access to any crop insurance.…”