Political Quotes

“I really kind of thought we were working on the annual agriculture appropriations bill, with the discretionary money, the programs that are handled on a year-to-year basis, but it seems we are going to debate the farm bill. I guess if that is the case, I should be managing it and let me just do it a year early. The short statement is, like my colleagues Mr. Conaway and Mr. Peterson, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment. This amendment would turn an industry on its head. It would do no good. My good friend from Arizona has come to the floor and implied this would solve the trade dispute between the United States and Brazil. It would do no such thing. Mr. Flake has called this the Brazilian cotton problem, but the dispute is much more complicated than just cotton and actually involves export programs. This amendment wipes out the safety net established in 2008. For what reason? This is the kind of amendment you get when you have so-called experts offering amendments in areas outside their field of expertise. This is a devastating amendment. This would throw the cotton market into disarray. We have no assurance, as the ranking member and the General Farm Commodities Subcommittee chairman have noted, no assurance from the Brazilians that if we eliminated the cotton program, as this amendment basically does, that it would make any difference to them.…”