The Farm Bill

Floor Speech

Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak about a bill that's going to be on the House floor here in a couple of weeks. It should be certainly of interest to every man, woman, and child in this country because we all shake hands with a farmer at least three times a day--breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

And also it's relevant to my home State, the Keystone State of Pennsylvania, as agriculture is the number one industry in Pennsylvania. Some folks would be surprised to hear that.

But the fact is we'll have the farm bill before us. I'm proud to be a member of the Agriculture Committee. We have worked long and hard on this farm bill. We've made some great improvements.

We've eliminated many of the subsidies that have kind of clouded the farm bill, in my opinion, for decades; and we've moved towards a more free-market, risk-management approach, protecting our farmers, providing them some access to crop insurance and a dairy margin insurance to protect against the weather.

Agriculture is probably one of the most vulnerable parts, vulnerable industries, when it comes to all extremes of weather.

The farm bill also, I'm proud to say, ensures that every man, woman, and child in this country will have access to nutrition, every income-eligible man, woman, and child, because it also, the House version, ensures some reforms to stop the fraud and abuse that has run rampant with the farm bill.

So I encourage my colleagues to support the farm bill when it comes to the floor in the weeks ahead.

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