week. trent franks was in charge of this bill, but they brought out marsha blackburn to manage it on the house floor. they hastily added a rape exception, because they didn t want to seem insensitive to rape survivors. to me, the core misogyny of the bill remains and the arguments have to be made on the merits. but when people were ask welcome, why did the republicans bring this bill? the answer is, one, here s something their entire caucus agrees on. two, they are used to having republicans be on the offense on abortion rights and democrats turn and run. but that is not what happened. democrats really stood back on this and they called it they didn t run scared about social conservatives, they said, you know, this is insensitive to weapon. and you had the same sort of grassroots energy in texas, that really people are pushing back and saying, yes, fine, this is uncomfortable later abortions, but we still have to push back. part of it for me feels that this idea of marsha blackburn
people like john boyd, who farms in southern virginia, on our radar, not just these large-scale massive producers. the thing we have to do, when we talk about farming, we have to think about everybody. but this bill is making sure everyone is getting something. you know, the corporate giants are getting at out of this. so we can t sort of say, well, they re going to get, and those who are sitting there working their fingers to the bone every single day aren t going to get it. this isn t just about corporate welfare, this is about making sure that our farmers are taken care of. the people who are out there every day, who are watching that weather forecast, not because they want to know whether to bring an umbrella, because that s their livelihood. we have to look out how people every day take care of our needs, the food we have right here on this table here. we need to look out for the farmers who are really working themselves. and that s building coalitions. and that s a tough job.
now, here s majority leader eric cantor, praising yet another farm bill amendment. this amendment will help reduce federal expenditures, provide assistance to the states, and most importantly, it will help struggling families who find themselves relying on public assistance to get back on their feet. and the amendment that cantor touted, it wouldn t help struggling families to get on their feet. it would force them to find jobs that may not even exist or lose benefits, by allowing states to require beneficiaries to work. now, as we know, the house rejected the farm bill this week. they may try again. and if they do, the bill could come with even more conservative amendments. joining us from richmond, virginia, is john void, president of the national black farmers association, who has been closely involved in educating the congress about the farm bill and its effect on food stamp recipients as well as farm smallers. nice to have you, john. thank you for having me, melissa.
million-dollar farm operations. and it very seldom has helped small-scale farmers. and that has been my message on capitol hill over and over again. the farm bill must include help for small farmers. the top 10% and direct payments received over $1 million per farmer. and i m saying that some of those dollars could trickle down to actual farmers that need the help. here we are again, servicing the large scale farmers, the milk producers, the sugar recipients. all those things are going to remain in the farm bill. and here they are saying that they re moving that to the federal crop insurance program. john, let me bring in mark alexander here for a moment. this point about minority farmers and about small family farmers. i think of pickford as one of the great accomplishments of the obama administration in its first term. mark, tell me, how do we make sure that a for a bill keeps
in the house because of speaker gru s minions and because they had tacked on so many of their minionesque amendments and speaker gru suffered a pretty humiliating, it kind of makes you wonder what the guy is leader of even kind of defeat, one thing is clear, john boehner still wants to be the gru i m sorry, the speaker. which is why when he says when it comes to immigration, it will be his minions way or no way. on immigration, speaker boehner says he will not do what he did with the violence against women ac act, sandy aid relief, and the fiscal cliff. in all of those cases, they voted against the bill and boehner needed democrats to get sensible legislation passed. but on immigration reform, he says, no! without a majority of house republicans in favor of the bill, a bill which the senate is working on in a genuine bipartisan fashion, john boehner, speaker gru, says he won t even bring it to the floor. irin, this strikes me as not just sort of bumbling politics,