Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it was not very long ago when I was on the floor of the Senate with the distinguished majority leader, Senator McConnell, and the two of us were making the case for our bipartisan bill to legalize hemp, which we are very much interested in having included in the farm bill. I will talk a little bit more about our work on that. Our original sponsors were Senator Merkley and Senator Paul, and since then we have added 28 additional Members of the U.S. Senate as cosponsors. What I am going to do this afternoon for just a few minutes is talk about why it is so important that our bipartisan legislation, now cosponsored by almost one-third of this body, get enacted and be included as part of the farm bill. It is Hemp History Week again, and that is why I am back on the Senate floor to talk about the only schedule I controlled substance you can sew into a T-shirt and wear through TSA. Here, as we start, is the real head-scratcher: Products made with hemp are perfectly legal, but growing industrial hemp is a crime. There can't be many policies on the book that are more anti-farmer than that one. So I have a bottom line, which I discussed with Majority Leader McConnell recently on the floor of the Senate; that is, if you can buy it at a supermarket in America, our farmers ought to be allowed to grow it in America. For me, this issue goes back to a trip my wife and I took to a grocery store near our home in Southeast Portland.…”