Political Quotes

“I must say what surprises me the most, without question, is that my party, the Republican Party, took a majority in this institution for the first time in 40 years, yet agriculture somehow escaped the reforms. It is unbelievable to me that we are still, in the name of reform, slow-walking reform, smiling at the American people, and saying we reformed agriculture. My goodness, we are so deep in the agriculture business, it survives whatever winds blow through this city. They are so institutionally prominent. Whether it is peanuts, sugar, tobacco, whatever, price supports, subsidies, quotas, they make no sense in the free market. The government should not be this involved in the farm business. Mr. Chairman, I come from a deep farm history in the Sequatchie Valley of east Tennessee and in northeast Alabama, and the farmers in my part of the world want to be left alone. They want to farm all by themselves, without figuring out what the government is doing next.”