Steven Gunderson: “This is the first farm bill we have ever put together in the post-balanced budget era. This is the first farm bill we…”

“This is the first farm bill we have ever put together in the post-balanced budget era. This is the first farm bill we have ever put together in the post-GATT era. This is not going to be business as usual. This is totally changing the way agriculture has operated in this country. As a result of that, we bring you today, on behalf of the Committee on Agriculture, the most comprehensive reform in agricultural policy in the history of most of these programs. As the chairman of the Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry, I can tell the Members, we bring the most comprehensive reform in the 45-year history of the dairy program; and it is time we do, because we are not only balancing the budget, we are not only preparing for that post-GATT world era economy, we are doing so in a decade in which we have seen 125,000 dairy farmers go out of business. So let us understand what we are trying to do here today. We are trying to reform this program. We are eliminating butter and powder price supports. We are telling USDA to come up with comprehensive reform of the pricing system.”