Gilbert Gutknecht: “I will not be as passionate as the previous speaker. I was just sitting here listening to that speech and the other…”

“I will not be as passionate as the previous speaker. I was just sitting here listening to that speech and the other speeches thinking about what a wonderful place this is, because last night, I should not even say last night, earlier this morning the gentleman from Florida and I were here on this floor, and we were on the same side of an issue. We do not grow a single sugar beet in my district in Minnesota, but we do grow a lot of sugar beets in Minnesota. In fact, in Minnesota it is a $2 billion industry. It is a very important industry, and particularly in northwestern Minnesota, again, very nonpartisan areas represented on both sides of the Red River by Democrats. I want to talk about the sugar program just briefly, if I can, both from the perspective of agriculture policy and for budget policy, because I think it is interesting how people of good will, people who may agree or disagree on different issues, can look at the same set of facts and come to such incredibly different conclusions on them. Let me just share with my colleagues my conclusion. If we look at the sugar title in the farm bill, it does not cost the American taxpayer a penny. We make money on the sugar title.”