Political Quotes

“I have an amendment that we have been working very hard to work out. I commend and appreciate the cooperation of the chairman and the ranking member of the Agriculture Committee. It is an amendment that has been requested specifically by the Secretary of Agriculture to address a very serious problem. We have had documented discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture against minority and impoverished farmers over an extended period of time. A report that he requested that took 90 days to compile again documented the same problem. We have reports going back to 1995 to document the problem. To the best of my knowledge, no Senator who has worked with me or worked on this particular problem has suggested in any way, shape, or form that the problem does not exist and that we do not have an obligation to solve it. The only difficulty that we have run into is identifying the precise offset. The offset that the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture recommended is one in terms of a very small reduction in the crop insurance Program, taking it down from 28 to 27.9, I believe it is. I hope that by the time the vote will actually be required we will have resolved this particular question.”