Paul E. Kanjorski: “I would like to register an objection. I am a guy who loves peanut butter, and I have discovered, my research, it cost…”

“I would like to register an objection. I am a guy who loves peanut butter, and I have discovered, my research, it cost me 33 cents more for a 18 ounce jar, and I think that the Members on the other side of the aisle should get together and vote me a subsidy of 33 cents for every jar of peanut butter I consume a year because, after all, why should I not be entitled to be subsidized as the peanut farmer is? This argument is really an argument. It is bipartisan in nature. There are those on both sides of the aisle that want to support the peanut farmer. If we talk about the peanut farmer, my heart goes out to him, too, except when we look at the reality of the situation, 22 percent of the peanut farmers are deriving 80 percent of the profits from these quotas. Seventy-five percent or two-thirds of the licensees of these peanut support systems are not farmers. They are owners of land and owners of licenses. Some of them inherit them as a matter of inheritance from father and grandfather, and we are saying here that we are fighting for these poor farmers. A lot of them live on Wall Street, the holders of these licenses, because this is a negotiated saleable item, a commodity that is sold in this country, and it is just time that, if we are talking about free markets and we are talking about competition, we are not suggesting to go straight to a free market. We are suggesting a simple 10 percent reduction in support costs.”