Political Quotes

“I rise to make the point that under the current law, there are no limits for government price support payments to farmers using commodity certificates. If commodity certificates and loan forfeitures would have been included under the payment cap limit like in the Senate version of the 2002 farm bill, the CBO has estimated we would save $118 million in FY 05 alone--$118 million--that could be used for some other very worthy initiatives in this agriculture appropriation bill or larger supports for family farmers. We all have heard the news reports about large corporate farms receiving millions of dollars in government payments through the use of generic commodity certificates. Generic certificates do not benefit average family farmers but allow the largest farmers to receive unlimited payments. It is not good public relations for agriculture or our next farm bill. Under our current system, when the $75,000 limit is reached, producers can continue to receive unlimited price support benefits through loan forfeitures and generic commodity certificates. Generic commodity certificates are in practice the same thing as marketing loan gains, yet they are not included under the payment limitations. Thus, generic commodity certificates are essentially loopholes allowing large farming operations to exceed the payment limits. Should it be the objective of federal farm policy to provide virtually unlimited price support to large farming operations?”