Judd Gregg: “Mr. President, what this amendment does is address the sugar program. The sugar program has been an item of considerable…”

“Mr. President, what this amendment does is address the sugar program. The sugar program has been an item of considerable controversy here in the Senate and in the House and in the farm program generally. The sugar program is, in my opinion, an outrage. I have said that a number of times on the floor of this Senate. It is a subsidy program where the consumers of this country are asked to pay somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion of additional costs for sugar used in this country in order to benefit a few growers. It does not directly cost the Federal Government any money. It does, actually, cost money in the products we buy that are sugar related, but it is not a dramatic amount of money. What it is, essentially, is a tax on the consumers of this country in the form of the price for sugar, which greatly exceeds what the world market price is for sugar. In fact, if you look at the sugar program honestly, it is the only surviving element of Marxist economics in the Western Hemisphere outside of Cuba.”