Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, it is hard to imagine anyplace outside of the Beltway where having a subsidy of $275,000 limit is starving people to death. Yes, it is possible that people in this current system are involved with slowly spiraling down into greater and greater debt. Overproduction, my colleague from Michigan talked about that, where we are encouraging people to plant crops, overproduce, driving down the cost and leaving the problem either for the individual to bear the burden or for the taxpayer. There is a better way. There is the opportunity here with this motion to instruct for us to be able to deal with how we spend the money more wisely. There is no reason that we cannot help producers around the country do things that will make a difference to help them stay in business. It is expensive to be able to comply with water quality, to be able to change some agricultural practices. There are people that are being driven around the country into subdividing farms because of market pressures. We can have money for conservation payments, for purchase of development rights, to be able to help them stay in business. The current system, with its lavish spending, is not stopping the loss of farms. We just heard in Nebraska, a thousand farms went out of the hands of family farmers.”