Joseph T. Burns: “You know, when you pass the football, three things happen. And two of them are bad. That is kind of like the way we are…”

“You know, when you pass the football, three things happen. And two of them are bad. That is kind of like the way we are running the farm program now. When you are in the grain business because the grain companies can buy the grain cheap, if you take out a market loan on your grain you can forfeit the grain, if it is not market price. And that goes into the pockets of the taxpayer. Then the grain companies buy that after that happens probably at a lower price. Or they can go ahead and buy the grain, and the taxpayers pick up the difference between the grain and the target price. Three things happen. Two of them are bad for the taxpayer, and I think for agriculture. The reason we have high prices right now is because we had a crop failure. How can you pay a deficiency payment when you do not have any wheat? We had a great crop in Montana. We had a big crop and got a big price, and everybody is wealthy without the luxury of the deficiency payments. So I think what we are doing is so that a majority of agriculture would like to get their dollars at the marketplace, and I hope that this will work.”