Byron Dorgan: “We have been talking about financial modernization. It seems to me the farm crisis is more important than that. That is…”

“We have been talking about financial modernization. It seems to me the farm crisis is more important than that. That is ahead of us. The Internet tax freedom bill, it seems to me the farm crisis is more important than that. We apparently are going to take that up. I mentioned when I began this discussion the juxtaposition of a hedge fund nearly going broke on Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Board getting so concerned that they convened the bankers and said, ``Gee, can't we help those people; prop up their pillow, help them get back to bed, give them a nap and get them some strength again?'' And it is interesting to me that, in fact, the Fed even signaled when that was going on, they were going to reduce interest rates. So today, lo and behold, they lowered interest rates. It is the ``too big to fail'' thing. It reminded me of what Will Rogers once said. He said, ``You know, if one day all the lawyers on Wall Street failed to show up for work, wouldn't anybody miss lunch. But if all the cows in America failed to show up to the barn to get milked, then we would have a problem.'' What Will Rogers was trying to say in a humorous way is ``What really matters in this country is what we produce.'' And there is no more all-star producer in America than the family farmer. Yet this country has an economic system that says to them, ``There's no connection between effort and reward. You make the effort. You go broke.'' And that is what is wrong with this system.”