Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I commend my colleague Mike Conaway and the other members of the Agriculture Committee for their work on the farm bill. I have every intention of voting for the bill and have stated that on many occasions. Having been working on a reauthorization of a major bill recently, I can certainly sympathize with the effort here and say that, overall, this bill is an improvement on past farm bills because it responds to the desperate need of work requirements for able-bodied people. However, there is another piece of this bill that has been around for a long time, 85 years, that is not corrected, is decidedly bad policy, and is long overdue to be corrected, and our amendment does that. This amendment is not new. In fact, this body has debated it in every farm bill for over a generation. The issue of which I speak is the issue with sugar and the need for reform of the way we treat sugar, which is different from all other commodity programs. It is the only program that provides both loan supports and supply management. Supply management is the ugly cousin of direct payments. It rewards inactivity. Americans are outraged when they hear tales of direct payments to farmers for not producing something. That same injustice--reward for inactivity, protection from competition--is what we find in the sugar program. Let's be crystal-clear about what the sugar program does.…”