Benjamin Gilman: “while I am troubled by the failure of this measure to include funding for the disaster that befell our onion farmers in…”

“while I am troubled by the failure of this measure to include funding for the disaster that befell our onion farmers in 1999, I will support this measure because it provides vitally important assistance to many farmers, growers of speciality crops and dairy farmers as well as the agricultural communities in my district. I would also like to express my concerns over provisions in this bill in the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Title relating to Iran and other nations on the list of terrorist nations. We should, in my view, not be modifying our present policies toward Iran and Libya where we have in place a de facto prohibition against government credit for our exports to those countries. The waiver on the prohibition on financing for commercial exports to Iran, Libya, North Korea or Sudan for national security purposes is, in my view, overly broad. Next year, we need to revisit this issue so we can ensure that the U.S. Taxpayer is not supporting commercial exports to terrorist countries, unless there are urgent humanitarian reasons to do so.”