[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 32 (Monday, August 13, 2001)]
[Pages 1147-1148]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Exchange With Reporters at the Coffee Station Restaurant in Crawford, 
Texas

August 8, 2001

Agriculture Economic Assistance Bill

    The President. I've got some of the local farmers here; I'm going to 
explain to them the 5.5 supplemental I'm signing here pretty soon. 
Emergency supplemental for----

President's Vacation

    Q. How does it feel to be here with the people of Crawford?
    The President. It's great to be here with the people of Crawford.
    Q. What did you order, sir?
    The President. I ordered a cheeseburger and some onion rings. And 
I'm not sharing any with you. [Laughter]

[[Page 1148]]

    Stretch [Richard Keil, Bloomberg News], you order something up. 
You're getting paid too much money anyway.
    Q. I'll have a bite of your cheeseburger. How's that?
    Q. Sir, did the sign make you decide to come inside?
    The President. What did it say?
    Q. Did the sign outside make you decide to stop?
    The President. I didn't see it. What did it say?
    Q. It said, ``George and Laura, come by.''

Agriculture Economic Assistance Bill

    The President. No. What made me decide to stop was the wonderful 
people who own the place--and the cheeseburger. [Laughter]
    One of the things that I'm talking about here is how hard it is for 
a lot of these farmers to make a living. And one of the things about the 
farm program that we've got to make sure happens is that when there's 
emergency aid, like the bill I'm going to sign here next week, it gets 
to the farmers who are farming.
    A lot of times that money goes to people who aren't farmers. We want 
to make sure it goes to help the farmers who are actually farming the 
land. There's a lot of medium-sized farmers that need help, and one of 
the things that we're going to make sure of as we restructure the farm 
program next year is that the money goes to the people it's meant to 
help.
    I'm also going to tell them that part of the supplemental--some 
folks tried to increase the supplemental, but that money wasn't going to 
the farmers. The extra money they tried to put on that would have busted 
the budget wasn't going to farmers; it was going to other matters. And 
what I'm interested in is, giving payments to the people that, like the 
corn farmers here at the table, that are working hard to make a living.
    Having said that, now we can eat. [Laughter]

President's Vacation

    Q. [Inaudible]--are you going running this afternoon?
    The President. I'm not going to run today, but I'll get you out 
there one of these days. I'm not going to run today.

Note: The exchange began at 10:40 a.m. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of this exchange.