Political Quotes

“I want to mention another group of Americans who are suffering as Members of Congress continue to hold up the disaster relief supplemental appropriations bill and prevent us from passing a funding measure that the President can sign. That struggling group is our Nation's low-income farmers. Back in April of this year, a group of farmers came to my office and described to me a crisis as real as the floods faced by Americans in the Upper Midwest. It is planting season and many States, including Virginia, have exhausted their total allocation of direct operating loans. Direct operating loans are the funds made available by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cover the costs of planting and repaid when crops are harvested. Without operating funds, the livelihoods of many farmers, mostly on small farms, are threatened. The Operating Loan Program is especially important for minority farmers, many of whom have suffered from the well-documented discrimination within the Department of Agriculture. Discrimination has caused or contributed to the financial ruin of minority farmers nationwide and has resulted in bankruptcies and impoverished retirements. But as the number of black farmers in the United States has dwindled at three times the rate of other farmers nationwide-- nearly to the point of extinction--a few farmers have managed to survive and keep their struggling farms afloat.”