Political Quotes

“as we deal with the farm bill we have to acknowledge that 80 percent of that bill now is the SNAP program, or the Food Stamp Program. I will repeat that--80 percent of this bill. So we need to not call it the farm bill anymore. It needs to be considered primarily the Food Stamp bill as that's what it is. When we look at the bill, our sponsors are rightly pleased that they have tightened the belt of the farmers, they reduced some of the subsidies and programs, they created a little better policy, I believe, and they deserve some credit for that. But of the $800 billion that will be spent in the next 10 years, under current law--$800 billion compared to $200 billion in the rest of the farm program--for the $800 billion they are only claiming a $4 billion savings. It is quite true that we in America do not want to have people hungry. We do not want to have people malnourished. What we want is to run a Food Stamp Program that has integrity, that creates an incentive for responsible personal behavior and that helps America to be a healthy nation. I do not think we are there yet. In fact, we have Members on the Democratic side who are opposing even this $4 billion reduction in projected spending. This is less than half of 1 percent. And some of them don't even want to have that. Cut the farmers, all right, whack them 10 percent; but don't make real cuts to anything else or deal with any other programs.…”