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Agriculture Negatively Impacted

Floor Speech

Date: June 26, 2009
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Agriculture and Food

AGRICULTURE NEGATIVELY IMPACTED

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Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the cap-and-trade bill we will be taking up shortly.

Agriculture is one of the Nation's most energy-intensive industries and will be negatively impacted by this legislation. Even a small increase in operating costs could devastate rural farmers and ranchers, and this bill could prove to be a huge burden on our agricultural producers. U.S. farmers would also be at a severe disadvantage compared to farmers in nations which do not have cap-and-trade systems with the correspondingly high input costs.

Yesterday I offered an amendment which would have helped defray increased costs of production and declining prices resulting from increased imports or decreased exports.

It is simply not appropriate for allowances to be set aside for other industries heard by the cap-and-trade bill, but agriculture is left out.

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