Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today, the House of Representatives is voting on legislation dealing with the farm bill and food stamps. Recently--this week--the House of Representatives broke with 40 years of tradition, precedent, common sense, and perhaps human decency when it bowed to partisan politics and passed a farm bill without a nutrition title. They pulled apart what traditionally urban and rural interests have done in this country: coming together to pass a farm bill, connecting it with a nutrition title, where it served rural America, it served urban America, it was good for hungry kids, it was good for economic development, it was good for conservation and the environment. The House leadership has announced that later today--sometime this afternoon--the House will vote on a bill that would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, by nearly $40 billion. They are taking up this bill because the $20 billion in punitive SNAP cuts they failed to pass earlier this year was not enough for the majority. They do not only cut $20 billion--$20 billion, $20,000 million--$20 billion in cuts, when the average family gets $4.45 per day. Cutting $20 billion was bad enough. That was not good enough for those Members of the House of Representatives who want to see cuts twice as big. Many of those Members of the House of Representatives--or at least some of them--are farmers themselves who get huge farm subsidies. It begs the issue a little bit.…”