Dan Quayle Quotes

Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 - twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners.

Farm subsidies are a waste of money.

I am committed to helping our farmers in any way that I can.

Farm policy and food stamp policy should not be mixed. They should stand on their own merits.

We do participate in the government programs, like probably 95 percent of farmers do. People who aren't familiar with the agriculture industry, you know, try and make that look like something exceptional.

What in the hell would they do with the farm program without us?

Mr. President, it may surprise my colleagues, but I am no fan of federal disaster programs for agriculture. They are difficult to pass and often a disaster to implement.

I am committed to strengthening our agricultural economy by protecting the unique interests of small and medium size family farms so that they can continue to operate.

Programs that pay farmers not to farm often devastate rural areas. The reductions hurt everyone from fertilizer companies to tractor salesmen.

Yes, agriculture subsidies are far too generous. They need to be reined in because they cater to special interests while distorting free market competition. Yes, the farm laws are an anachronistic mess.

Establishment at public expense of rural depots for the most improved agricultural machinery, to be lent out to the agricultural population at a rent covering cost and management alone.

We don't pay truckers not to truck, we don't pay miners not to mine and we shouldn't pay farmers not to farm.

The only way to keep food prices down is to keep them [farmers] down on the farm after they've seen the parity.

Are we going to take the hands of the federal government completely off any effort to adjust the growing of national crops, and go right straight back to the old principle that every farmer is a lord of his own farm and can do anything he wants, raise anything, any old time, in any quantity, and sell any time he wants?

The Government in the US has become responsible for farmers’ income, leaving the big (transnational) buyers in the market free to exploit their oligopolistic position

President Lincoln’s biggest blunder was—no not General George McClellan—creating the Agriculture Department. Since 1995, 75 percent of all agricultural subsidies have gone to the largest and wealthiest 10 percent of farms.

Farm subsidies are a matter of national food security

Farm subsidies are bribes for votes.

What our family has done is participate in the farm programs … programs I think essentially almost every farmer in South Dakota has participated in those, and they haven't been bailouts, they have been programs that the United States has put forward for farmers to participate in.

You can't be elected president without passing though Iowa and bowing down before corn-based ethanol, before agricultural subsidies. I mean, even McCain was a critic of ethanol, but when he got to Iowa, he was singing a different tune.

It was in the best interests of Zavala and other counties that we move forward with a farm bill and provide certainty to ranchers, farmers, food banks, and other providers.

In a given year, the government may decide that farmers are growing more raisins than Americans will want to eat. That would cause supply to outstrip demand. Raisin prices would drop. And raisin farmers might go out of business.

It would be so simple for the government to support farmers to become more profitable and farm sustainably.

As I've long said, the farm bill is in need of major reform. At first chance, I voted to remove direct payments. Both the House and the Senate passed bills that end direct payments, and as we move forward, I hope we can work out the rest of the issues to implement the necessary reforms.

Do we need farm program reform? Absolutely.