Sen. Richard G. Lugar Delivers Remarks at the American Enterprise Institute

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Sen. Richard G. Lugar Delivers Remarks at the American Enterprise Institute

SEN. LUGAR DELIVERS REMARKS AT THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

JULY 2, 2008

SPEAKER: SEN. RICHARD G. LUGAR, R-IND.

[*] LUGAR: Chris, I'm honored to be with so many distinguished guests you have brought together today for this very important topic.

And I would say as a point of full disclosure that I come from a farm family. My grandfather, Riley Webster Lugar (ph), farmed in Morgan and Marion Counties of Indiana.

My dad purchased land in 1932, in the depths of Depression, probably with help from his father, and this was the farm that I used to work on throughout the summers, sometimes pulling corn out of the soybeans (ph) -- so-called volunteer corn, so the combine would not stick, and likewise investing in hogs that produced pigs. And this was to help produce money for our college education.

I mention all of this because my dad at that time discussed some of the subjects that we will touch upon today. He was an opponent of the New Deal and a vigorous opponent to Franklin Roosevelt's agricultural policies, which he characterized as plowing under crops and burning up little pigs, in essence.

The purpose of all of that exercise, however dastardly it now sounds, was the thought that somehow farmers would continually, if they were not constrained, produce too much. Therefore, given supply and demand, the prices would go down and that the way that you remedied this was by limiting the amount of food that could be produced by productive farmers.

This seems totally foreign to our objectives today -- so be it -- but agricultural policies that Chris DeMut...

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