07/24/08 What the Candidates Say

What the Candidates Say. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Ah yes, election year. We love it, we hate it. And every 4 years it's like a box of Cracker Jacks. You never know what you are going to get until you get inside. American Farm Bureau recently posed some difficult questions to the two candidates about Ag issues&and got some very different answers. MCCAIN: I'm a free trader and i believe that we need to get our agricultural products into markets all over the world and it will be a great thing for America not to mention our trade deficit. McCain pointed out that Obama opposes the Colombia free trade agreement, which could mean $900 million in exports for U.S. agriculture. Obama pointed out that McCain has opposed the last two farm bills. OBAMA: The bill did a lot more good than bad because it dramatically increased the funding to fight hunger, it increased funding for conservation and it provided farmers with at least some stability in an increasing volatile market. The presumptive presidential nominees talked about how they would tackle rising energy costs. MCCAIN: There is no doubt that we need to have alternate fuels. We need to have nuclear. We need to drill off shore. Senator Obama opposes storage and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. OBAMA: I believe that we've got to continue supporting ethanol and biodiesel and all the viable next generation of renewable energy sources. So agriculture and improving the quality of life in rural America is going to be a priority for me as president. So let's try and tackle immigration issues. First Barak Obama. OBAMA: Obviously what affects farmers most immediately is agricultural workers and this is one area where it is legitimate to say that without immigrant workers a lot of farms in America shut down and we just don't have a lot of U.S.-born workers who are interested in doing what is very difficult work on this front. So my commitment to you is that at minimum we would have the ag jobs portion of the immigration reform package done and hopefully by that first year. And how would John McCain tackle the issue? MCCAIN: We need a temporary worker programs associated with tamper-proof biometric documents so that you as an employer will know that that person is here as a temporary worker in the United States and you don't have to worry about a bogus social security card. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.