Current farm bill benefits the wrong people
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 11:32 PM PDT
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Farm prices are robust and rising, contributing to a global food crisis. Yet, the $300 billion, five-year farm bill recently hammered out by congressional negotiators is pretty much business as usual. The legislation would continue costly and largely unneeded farm subsidy programs that serve to drive up food prices at home. Ethanol only adds to the consumers’ costs.
President Bush has threatened to veto the massive spending bill, which is expected to win easy passage this week in the House and Senate. Bush says it’s far too expensive. He’s right.
Congress dismissed the president’s call for a reduction in the annual taxable income of those eligible for direct subsidy payments to $200,000 — a move that would have reduced this expense by $18 billion over the next five years. The final version of this bill allows married farmers with taxable earnings up to $1.5 million annually to collect subsidy payments.
Congress also ignored the administration’s recommendation to allow a quarter of the money designated for U.S. food aid for starving populations abroad to be used to buy foreign food supplies near the crisis areas. Congress instead sided with farm groups that have traditionally insisted on having food aid purchased from U.S. growers rather than abroad. There are at least two problems with that tradition. It deprives foreign growers of a needed economic boost, and the food aid from the United States often takes too long to get to the crisis area.
But food aid was not uppermost in the minds of congressional negotiators. They went so far as to include a mandate that would reduce the amount of emergency foreign food aid in order to provide more money for non-emergency assistance at home, according to The Associated Press.
The administration’s frustration stems from the well-documented fact that much of that assistance goes to individuals and interests that do not need it. The lion’s share of farm subsidies flow to the biggest and richest agricultural operations, not struggling family farms. In 2000, at least 20 Fortune 500 companies were identified by the Department of Agriculture as among the top recipients of subsidy payments.
American taxpayers have reason to share the administration’s frustration over the spending this farm bill would require. They are expected to shell out hundreds of billions of tax dollars over the next five years. Yet, the legislation promises little in return other than higher food prices.
Hide Behind wrote on May 15, 2008 12:46 PM:
Harff wrote on May 15, 2008 11:35 PM:
There are fewer than three million farmers who produce and over produce all of this food. We as a people must make some hard decisions for the future.
We can solve the employment crisis in this country by regulating the markests and the size of producers. How many more farms would we have if ADM and Cargill were taken out of the piture? How much cheaper would food be if we cut subsidies to 'KING COTTON?"
How much more would life be if the Wagner Act applied to farm labor?
These are the questions that strike at the heart of the farm bill. We as nation must protect our curse. So that we remain food independant. By breaking up the large farm trusts and regulations that put farm owners back on the land are critical to our future. "
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