Angie Craig: “so the point I think that my colleague and I are trying to make here is that, if there is a role for Government in…”

“so the point I think that my colleague and I are trying to make here is that, if there is a role for Government in agriculture--I think there is one, and I think it ought to be a very limited one--I see it in one of two or three areas. That is not to directly prop up or to subsidize a producer who has to produce to a market but allowing Government to help facilitate at no cost to the taxpayers anomalies within a market environment that only the Government can maybe help in because of their scope and their size, or in an instance where there is direct competition from foreign markets in which cheap product is produced either because of 'near slave labor' or because of subsidized Government programs in other producing areas of the world than the necessity of a relationship there where our Government can facilitate without it being a cost to the taxpayer. In all of those instances the sugar program meets those tests. In the area of trade, where you have real political consideration and political powers vying against each other that distort the marketplace, I believe our Government can be a facilitator to production agriculture, and it works in this instance. And it works so to create stability in the marketplace.”