Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, we face challenges in this country if we are to maintain a strong agricultural industry. The challenge right now is that other countries are doing better than we are helping their farmers. As much as this country works to operate this particular program of marketing help to get the word out of the quality of our products and the price of our products, our appropriations are flat and we are losing ground with other countries. For example, I would call to the attention for the gentleman from California that the European Union spends $92 million more than we do. Twice as much! The Cairns Group, countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Brazil and others spend $306 million more than we do. So imagine, not only are countries such as the E.U. spending more than the United States in their so-called MAP program, in their effort to enhance marketing and promote their farmers' products, they are subsidizing their farmers up to five times as much as we do. So on the one hand they are subsidizing their farmers to reduce the price they must charge for their exports and additionally they spend more on promotion--Huge competition for our American farmers, and in effect right now with the disastrous situation for farmers and ranchers in this country, it will put many of our farmers out of business.”