Angie Craig: “let me make note of the comments of the Senator from Kansas. They are so appropriate and so well directed at what we can…”

“let me make note of the comments of the Senator from Kansas. They are so appropriate and so well directed at what we can do here as it relates to controlling our spending and modifying programs that do just that and produce long-term benefits. The Senator from Kansas last year, of course, was a major player and author of the Freedom to Farm Act while he was chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. That very act changed the whole dynamics of Government policy as it related to farm programs and Government's relationship to production agriculture. He spoke of the net savings in the tens of billions of dollars that will result over an extended period of time. I would guess that less than a few years ago, many Senators and many Members of the U.S. House would have said, ``That can't be done; you cannot sever that relationship.'' And yet, we have severed it. Agriculture continues to prosper every bit as well as it did tied directly to the Government and Government programs and, we believe, in the long term will prosper more, simply because it is not relying on farming-to-Government programs but, in fact, is now looking at the market and producing to the market, as we had hoped it would. That was one major benefit in change that occurred in the 104th Congress. Another one that occurred that is, in the long term, going to substantially get us to the point by 2002 of a balanced budget, of course, was the welfare reform.”