Political Quotes

“First, under the last farm bill, we haven't added billions. We've reduced billions from the baseline for agriculture. Because we stopped the ad hoc disaster response when prices collapsed, we had a provision in the farm bill to respond when prices collapsed. Guess what? Prices did not collapse, and the farm bill did not need to extend itself to help farmers. The market took care of the farmers. That saved, over the last farm bill, $18 billion off of the baseline in commodity payments. Now, what happens as we try to build the farm bill this year? It means we have $18 billion less to do it. We have come up with a farm bill that has additional spending, every dollar of it paid for without raising taxes. And so this farm bill is a very tightly constructed, paid-for farm bill in contrast to the last farm bill where $73 billion was added to the baseline, none of it paid for, under the Republican majority that previously ruled this Congress. The final point I would make is that we are going to have disasters. They will threaten the very continuation of family farms across this country.”