Ron Kind: “My amendment is very straightforward, and in a second I'm going to explain it in more detail. For many, many years now…”

“My amendment is very straightforward, and in a second I'm going to explain it in more detail. For many, many years now, I and a group of bipartisan Members of this Congress have formed a coalition in an attempt to move farm bill reform forward, to try to end these large taxpayer subsidies that are going to a few, but very large, agribusinesses, subsidies that are not in fact helping family farmers, leading to greater consolidation in production of agriculture, driving up land values, making it more difficult for new beginning farmers to enter agriculture, and subsidies that are not fiscally responsible. In light of the budget deficits that we're wrestling with, what better time to continue to move in the area of reform under the farm bill with this Agriculture appropriation bill, rather than waiting for the promise or hope that in a year or two in the reauthorization of another farm bill that this institution might finally come around and start making the long overdue changes. Just to show you how perverted these farm programs have gotten, recently Brazil challenged our own domestic cotton subsidy program and prevailed in the WTO court. Now you would expect our rational response would be to reform our cotton subsidy program, to come into compliance with that WTO decision, to end these subsidies that you really can't justify here to our cotton producers, and we would solve this problem. But that's not the approach that was taken.…”