A Farm Bill in Name Only

Townhall.com ^ | November 17, 2013 | Ed Feulner

[Kaslin]

To paraphrase a famous Mark Twain quote, suppose you passed a farm bill. And suppose you passed a food stamp bill. But I repeat myself.

Hard as it may be to believe, 80 percent of the farm bill being hammered out by the Senate and the House of Representatives is made up not of agriculture programs, but of food stamps. And if that sounds upside down to you, you clearly don’t live “inside the Beltway,” where Orwellian logic is the order of the day.

Why are food stamps rolled into the legislation? They’re included “purely from a political perspective,” Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), ranking member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, said earlier this year. “It helps get the farm bill passed.”

At least it used to. House members who had tired of this business-as-usual practice rebelled this year, and managed to pass a version of the farm bill that (unlike its Senate counterpart) took food stamps out. When The Washington Post editorialized about the House bill, it listed this among the legislation’s “good points,” adding:

“[F]or the first time in many years, representatives passed agriculture-support programs separately from food stamps, ending the old log-rolling arrangement between urban and rural delegations that insulated both programs from scrutiny on the merits.”

Unfortunately, this is Washington, where most politicians do their hardest work insulating programs from scrutiny on the merits.

Most Americans, however, favor the House’s action. In a “Food Demand Survey” conducted by Oklahoma State University, people asked whether they supported or opposed the following statement: “Separate the food stamp program from the farm bill and debate its merit separately from farm supports and subsidies.” Support came in at 73 percent.

Separation isn’t the only issue though. The entire purpose of separating food stamps from agriculture programs is to achieve real reform. While there’s a lively debate going on regarding food stamp reform, that’s not the case when it comes to other troubling provisions of the farm bill. As has been the case since FDR was president, agriculture policy is a government- run behemoth that would make a Soviet central planner blush.

The most expensive single farm program subsidizes about 62 percent of the premiums that farms pay for crop insurance. Yet instead of finding ways to reduce the load on taxpayers, the House and Senate versions would expand this program.

Or take the sugar program. Sugar prices have generally been double the world price for decades. It’s largely due to the government dictating how much sugar can be sold, and imposing quotas on imports -- quotas designed solely to protect the market share of domestic producers. Every sugar-sweetened product costs more to make, adding to everyone’s grocery bills. Both the House and Senate versions of the farm bill keep the sugar program intact.

Meanwhile, as I’ve detailed in previous columns, the bulk of agriculture subsidies go not to the small, struggling farmers that most Americans envision, but to huge “agri-businesses” with annual incomes well in excess of $1 million.

Yes, the House and Senate are finally dropping the direct payments made for years to farmer of certain commodities, such as corn, cotton, wheat and rice -- subsidies so indefensible, the American Farm Bureau Federation has called for their repeal. But they’re adding new programs that could prove even costlier, such as one that would force taxpayers to cover even minor losses suffered by farmers.

“A farm bill should serve the interests of the American people,” writes Heritage Foundation farm-bill expert Daren Bakst. “This first starts with taking politics out of the bill.” That means considering food stamps separately and making other needed reforms. Raising another bumper crop of subsidies and bad policy is simply unacceptable.

[Dilbert San Diego]

For whatever reason, the Department of Agriculture administers the food stamp program. Not sure why that was set up this way years ago, but probably explains why food stamps are part of a farm bill.

[marron]

Aside from food stamps, is there anything Ag Department does that we couldn’t live without?

As we approach 20 trillion dollars in debt, is there even one politician out there calling for its elimination?

[nascarnation]

The Great Society folks weren’t dumb.
This was a great way to:
1) make it look less like welfare
2) get influential groups (farmers, and their suppliers) on board for lobbying

like most entitlement programs it began small:

$75 million to 350,000 individuals

Now it’s $75 BILLION, 48 MILLION individuals

[James C. Bennett]

Get the farmers’ mouths off of the taxpayer’s teats by eradicating the vulgar subsidies to them, direct and indirect. That will be a first step in eliminating the many insanities in this nation, not least of which is the mandatory mixing of farm-sourced ethanol into gasoline to produce a sub-par, bastardised fuel that ends up making cars not only inefficient, but also less reliable.

[Lurker]

Hear hear, sir.

[factoryrat]

They used to actually distribute food bought up by the feds as a form of guaranteed purchases, your crops and foodstuffs were bought for a set price, and were distributed to the poor, AKA: free cheese and whatnot. It all changed with the introduction of the ebt, which skips the free food, and doles out the free money. ADC and welfare used to be a way to help the people get through a rough patch between jobs, with rigid means testing, now it’s used to placate the lofo crowd, and used as corporate welfare to subsidize the illegals for financial and political gain, at the expense of the taxpayer. So that means work harder, because millions of sponges and mexicans want to live the good life at your expense. And if you don’t deliver, well mexico has plenty of potential soldiers at obama’s disposal.

[James C. Bennett]

The system is truly fracked, but scarier still is the extraordinary apathy to the looming disaster ahead.

[Zuriel]

“The most expensive single farm program subsidizes about 62 percent of the premiums that farms pay for crop insurance. Yet instead of finding ways to reduce the load on taxpayers, the House and Senate versions would expand this program........But they’re adding new programs that could prove even costlier, such as one that would force taxpayers to cover even minor losses suffered by farmers.”

It’s not so much the farmers that the guvmint is trying to protect from financial shortfall, but the lenders (Wall Street).

It really saddens me to see how the local agricultural community has become to dependent on governmental control.

A few years ago, a former farmer in my neighborhood heard of a farm tour that was going to take place in our county. The farm bureau was showing city folk some of the modern farming operations. Since one stopping point was to a farm just a short distance up the road from his place, he planned on putting up a sign, reading: “Everything you are about to see was paid for by the U S taxpayer”.

While that would have been an exaggeration, it would have been funny to see. He was the type of in your face guy to do it, but didn’t afterall.

[missycocopuffs]

And EBT card users seem incapable of making good choices at the grocery store: Too Much of Too Little: A diet fueled by food stamps is making South Texans obese but leaving them hungry.

But take heart, at least all their diabetes-related medical expenses will be covered for "free" by Medicaid or Obamacare.