Political Quotes

“This is an amendment that gets, again, to what I see as a group of very influential, wealthy, graced quota holders who have been put in a position to profit extraordinarily by this program, and have put themselves in a position that is, I think, virtually unique in the agriculture industry. Most of the commodity programs, all but a couple, have been run historically by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That would make sense. USDA has the authority to oversee these programs, and, as a result, the USDA has taken the responsibility of running the program, of operating their loan programs or deficiency programs, of carrying out the price of programs, of penalizing wrongdoers, of promulgating regulations--all of that has been done within the Department of Agriculture, with the soybean program, the cotton program, and a whole lot of other programs. All of them have been run and operated by a bureaucrat out of USDA, but not the peanut grower. Not the peanut grower. The Government, USDA, contracts with what are called marketing associations or cooperatives to administer the program. What does that mean? These are associations--get this--these are the people who operate the program, who oversee it, penalize wrongdoers, help promulgate regulations for the program. And who are the people who compose the marketing associations? I will give three guesses--you are right, the quota growers. The people who participate in the program run the program.”