Political Quotes

“I am supportive of what the Senator from South Dakota is trying to do. I associate myself with the remarks made by my good friend from Wyoming. Unless we deal with contracts, this matters not because, in other words, they will just contract the cattle. They will contract the cattle right from the cow/calf producer before they even go into the feedlot. I don't want to get caught in the same quagmire we have had with market reporting. That has turned out to be a beast. I do not know if it has helped out in any way. But what our intent was on market reporting was that the infrastructure of the USDA Market Reporting Service was already there and sales had to be reported. But OMB got in the middle of it and said, if only one guy was bidding on the livestock, then they can't report that because that is a violation of privacy in business or--I don't know, lawyers have some fancy word for it. I am not a lawyer. I have never been hinged with that title. So the OMB got in the middle of it, and they had a working sheet on why we could not have true transparency in the livestock marketing business. It was that thick. It was just--it would just blind you. I have nothing against cooperatives either, but I have yet to see one that is managed all that well. What they are trying to do with prime beef is a venture--and we have producers in Montana who have cattle on feed in that program.”