Perry on Ag
Perry On Ag. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
The political season is beginning to heat up and the candidates are jockeying for positions . The Iowa caucuses are just weeks away and on Monday evening - Texas Governor Rick Perry - a Republican Presidential candidate - spoke with Iowa farmers during a telephone town hall event hosted by the Iowa Soybean Association. During his opening remarks - Perry said the country is in trouble and he is concerned about the future. He said his candidacy is about fighting the fight for the next generation.
PERRY: I’m not interested in going to Washington to reshuffle the deck, to nibble around the edges. I’m about really overhauling the place. When I think about what has happened up there and I’m reading these accounts of politicians doing these incredibly risky deals with these Wall Street bankers, I think that’s one of the great problems this countries got. I can diagram it on a map and it’s a straight line from Washington DC to Wall Street.
Asked about his thoughts on infrastructure - Perry suggested the need to restructure the Army Corps of Engineers - and to change the way things are handled in Washington.
PERRY: I think that the key is making sure that you have the resources in Washington and that we’re not spending money on programs that we don’t need. That we’re analyzing and we’re putting the dollars into long-term infrastructure. They really put this country in a heck of a predicament from the standpoint of debt. And I’ve yet to figure out where that money went because it didn’t create any jobs and it sure didn’t create any transportation infrastructure.
A poll of the audience showed that more than 46-percent felt burdensome regulations are the number one threat to agriculture. Perry said that all these new regulations coming out of the Environmental Protection Agency are a concern.
PERRY: What I want to do and what I’ve called for already is to pull every regulation back since ’08 and audit them and have not only the agency audit them but third party outside groups audit these regulations and do it in a very speedy fashion. And if bad regulations kills jobs and cost money, more than what the benefit would be then I’ll do away with them.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
