David Thomas: “I rise to talk on this issue. It is an important issue to this country; it is an important issue to my State. I suspect…”

“I rise to talk on this issue. It is an important issue to this country; it is an important issue to my State. I suspect much of what I state may have perhaps already been said. Nevertheless, I think it is important that we take a continuing look at the facts of the issue. We have heard a lot of emotional discussion with respect to it. The fact is, we have been through this before. About every year we seem to go through the same discussion. It does impact many people. It is not something where just a few rich people are involved. It provides 420,000 jobs in 40 States. Many agriculture communities are dependent on sugar production, as are some in my State. Frankly, it is one of the few products that is processed on to retail use. It comes out of the State ready to put on the grocery store shelf. Seldom does that happen in my State. It provides a $26 billion annual economic activity and is a very high quality product, one that is changing. We talked about the candy and so on. Most of that comes from corn sweeteners. Nevertheless, it is very important. It is a very efficient industry; by world standards, we have the 18th lowest cost of production out of 96 producing countries, despite the fact that we have high-cost environmental standards and those kinds of costs. As the Senator from North Dakota made quite clear, we keep talking about the 'world' price. It isn't the world price. It is the dump price. Almost all the countries are subsidized.”