On the recordJune 15, 2011
I appreciate the gentleman's words, and I appreciate his courtesy. I listened with amusement to my friend from Georgia talk about his concern that we're going to be importing food from overseas if we have some reasonable limitation on these title I payments. The food, which are the fruits and vegetables that the people in my State raise--and I met with a bunch of them this last week again--get zip. They get nada. We're cutting back on the research funding for them. We're cutting back on marketing. We're cutting back on helping them comply with the environmental requirements that they want to meet because they're good stewards of the land. We're making it harder for them to do the work of producing food for America. Yet we're having lavish subsidies for five commodities, which is where 90 percent of the money goes. If you really cared about protecting the food supply, we'd redirect it. We'd save this $650 million, and we'd put it where it would do more good.
