San Francisco Chronicle
11-08-07
On the Farm Bill
Beltway's Green Acres
Debra J Saunders
Watch how the new Democratic Congress packs pork into this year's federal
Farm Bill. You'd think that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are trying to make
George W. Bush look good. The Democrats had told America that if they won
power, they would end the GOP's unconscionable spending bonanza. Now the
Dems are wallowing in other people's money. In July, the House passed a porkladen $280 billion five-year Farm Bill. Now the Senate is poised to pass a $288
billion Farm Bill that hands billions of taxpayer dollars - your money - to
agribusiness.
It doesn't matter that farm incomes are at an all-time high. The Senate Farm Bill
mandates $42 billion in subsidies for five crops (corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and
wheat). It sets aside $26 billion in "direct payments" to farmers or people who
once farmed land. As The Chronicle's Carolyn Lochhead has so ably reported,
10 percent of beneficiaries will receive 60 percent of direct-payment funds. Dead
people have received checks. According to Time magazine, Uncle Sam has
given Farm-Bill money to 1,324 residents of New York City.
So why would Congress pass such an outrageous bill? Because it can.
And clearly Democratic leaders, as the GOP biggies before them, have decided
that they are more likely to hang onto power if they give your money to Big Ag.
They fear those farm interests far more than they fear the wrath of informed
voters.
You've heard this song before. In 2002, Bush made the mistake of signing a pork
fest of a farm bill put together by free-spending Republicans.
Now, however, the Bush administration has seen the light. As Acting Agriculture
Secretary Chuck Conner told reporters Monday, "The fundamental flaw with the
2002 bill is it pays farmers the most when they need it the least, it doesn't pay
them very much at all when they've had a crop disaster." Conner objected to the
fundamental unfairness of the Senate's bid to raise taxes on other sectors of the
economy, so that more tax dollars can be thrown at "millionaires living on Park
Avenue."
Speaker Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, promises reform in the next Farm
Bill. Ha. Methinks that if Democrats can't cut corporate welfare in the very year in
which they promised to deliver big reforms, they never will. In five years, Pelosi
simply will have honed the bad habits that the powerful develop to strengthen
their chokehold on power inside the Beltway.
Even modest reforms are doomed. Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Frank
Lautenberg, D-N.J., have introduced the Fresh (for Farm, Ranch, Energy
Stewardship and Health) Act, which would replace crop subsidies with an
insurance program, directing the projected $20 billion in savings toward
conservation, nutrition programs and budget deficit reduction. Supporter Tom
Schatz, president of Citizens against Government Waste, told me, "I don't see
the Fresh Act getting through the Senate. Despite the logic, there's too much
pressure from the farm community to continue the subsidies."
And this bill would not slash federal farm spending. "We would certainly prefer
that all savings go to reduce the deficit," Schatz noted, but moving the savings to
other spending was the only way Lugar and Lautenberg could get any support.
Or put another way: In Washington, it is easier to pass a bad bill than a good bill.
It doesn't even matter that many farmers believe that subsidies hurt family
farmers and encourage factory farming. A Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
study found that the rural counties that got the most subsidies suffered the worst
population loss and weakest job growth. And still there is no turning off the
spigot.
Bruce Babcock, director of Iowa State University's Center for Agricultural
and Rural Development, told Time magazine, "It only makes sense if the
mission is finding way to shovel money to farmers."
No, it only makes sense if the mission is to buy re-election and partisan control
by taking money from all taxpayers and giving it to a powerful few. It only makes
sense because, beyond all reason, voters let their elected officials get away with
it.
E-mail: dsaunders@sfchronicle.com.