Posted on 11/07/2005 3:49:54 PM PST by SJackson
WASHINGTON – The Senate had a chance last week to repudiate – albeit tepidly – the Bush administration’s shameless use of taxpayers’ money to buy electoral votes in the 2004 election. It didn’t.
Instead, 53 senators voted to continue the welfare system that sends billions of dollars each year to some farmers. Lifetime limits and requirements to work 30 hours a week for pay seemed fair when Congress decided that paying women to stay home and raise their children cheated taxpayers. That same logic, however, does not apply to agribusiness.
There is nothing fair about the farm subsidy system in this country. Forget for a moment that there are world trade implications for a country that underwrites an economic sector. Instead, accept the most common arguments in support of farm subsidies: Subsidies ensure national security (Americans won’t starve if adequate food is produced domestically) and stability (fat and happy people don’t launch revolutions).
Imagine a dinner plate filled with the things we pay to grow: A pile of macaroni moistened with soy or canola oil, a cob or two of corn, a plop of oatmeal sweetened with sugar, a mound of rice and a garnish of sunflower seeds. Your appetizer was a choice of a fistful of honey-roasted peanuts or some hummus made of chickpeas. You washed it down with a glass of milk or a bottle of beer and topped it off with a post-prandial puff on a Marlboro. Your napkin was a cotton-wool-mohair mixture, and somewhere in the meal was sorghum, which I’m not entirely sure how you’d eat.
Your supper of subsidized foodstuffs – the crops Congress has determined to be essential to national security – included no tomatoes or salad fixin’s, no peaches or grapes.
In short, the American agri-welfare system is available only to certain farmers who grow certain crops. All others: Kwitcherbitchin.
If it’s in the national security interest to underwrite the production of farm products, it ought to be in the national interest to subsidize potatoes, chickens, OJ and even maple syrup – in short, things Americans eat. Instead, we paid $31 billion in the past three years to farmers – mostly giant operations – who grow certain things but not others.
This whole system was supposed to end. In 1996, led by Republicans, Congress passed a six-year bill that began to wean farmers off their welfare system. The 2002 bill was supposed to finish the process. Instead, the Republican Congress and the Republican White House flipped.
Members of Congress were concerned about their re-election prospects later in 2002. The Bush administration was looking to 2004 and adding up the electoral votes of Iowa. Those 16 electoral votes that President Bush got to give him another four years in the Oval Office cost us $31 billion so far, with three more years of subsidies.
Based on everything the Bush administration was supposed to embrace, the end of agri-welfare should have been a slam dunk. Instead, Bush weighed the continuation of an indefensible system against possible re-election defeat. Iowa vs. the rest of us. He didn’t veto the bill.
A “reform” in the 2002 bill was a cap on the amount a farmer could receive in subsidy payments: $180,000 a year, $360,000 for a married couple. It’s a sham limit, as the superb work of the Environmental Working Group ( www.ewg.org) shows. Funneling Agriculture Department records of all farm payments into a giant database, EWG lays out who gets how much.
The shocking bottom line: In the past decade, 72 percent of the $143.8 billion in agriculture welfare went to the top 10 percent of recipients. Not all is for crop subsidies; there are payments to conservation programs and weather disasters rolled into that figure. But even when crop subsidies alone are examined, it’s clear that small farms – the family farms people say are so important to preserve – are not the major beneficiaries.
Last week the Senate was asked to lower that $360,000 ceiling a tiny bit to $250,000 per couple. No dice. Indiana’s senators voted the right way, but they were in the minority. Some who opposed the change said there’ll be time enough to have that debate when the next farm bill is written in 2007, a few months before the 2008 presidential and congressional primaries.
Second helpings on corn, anyone?
-------------------
If it’s in the national security interest to underwrite the production of farm products, it ought to be in the national interest to subsidize potatoes, chickens, OJ and even maple syrup...Based on everything the Bush administration was supposed to embrace, the end of agri-welfare should have been a slam dunk.
No, immigration should have been a slam dunk, the lobbyists represent non-Americans, but this was a close second.
From that opening line, you'd think the Bush Administration had originated the concept of buying votes with taxpayer money.
"There is nothing fair about the farm subsidy system in this country."
Proud to say that I've never taken dime-one for my small laying hen operation. I sell eggs year-round and raise laying hens in the spring to sell to other local farmers. I started small and will stay small because who wants to work more than they have to, just to give it back to the government? That's just wrong.
I married into a farming family a decade ago, and aside from some set-aside land that is a tree farm, FIL never took a dime, either.
He's in his 70's and if it wasn't raining, he'd be out harvesting soybeans right now. By himself. In the dark.
And you know what? Both of us like it that way. No strings attached, you know? ;)
Good!! I needs to puts dat on ma grits.
Well, you could eat your share of what you paid to have excavated from under the city of Boston, but you probably wouldn't like it.
Check out your neighbors and see how much they are getting. You WILL be surprised.
And the Bushbots cheer on...
As far as this tripe was worth reading.
They eat a sorghum porridge in Africa. I htink you have too cook it a good while.
A few years ago, probably 2002 (?) when the huge bill passed I posted several articles on the subsidies. I'm guessing most folks don't care about the expense, even on FR. As I recall the #1 zip code in terms of receipts was in Lincoln Park, #2 in Manhattan. I never considered they're for the food we don't eat as well. My guess the government will never offer you money for producing eggs, or not producing eggs, unless you switch to ostrich or emu eggs, something no one but the government would expend money on.
You're welcome to convince me that subsidies as they exist are a good thing. There may be a place for a limited role, but most of what I've seen isn't much different than welfare. Additionally, I'd be willing to consider subsidies to the "small" farmer as a way of encouraging land conservation, economic or not. Despite the fact that the "small" druggist or "small" haberdasher or "small" restaurateur don't receive subsidies in the interest of preserving small town America. But that's not where the money goes.
BTW, this "bread basket" journalist appears to have lived in DC for decades. Don't the all :>)
I've eaten sorghum syrup on pancakes and waffles. It can also be used as a sweetener in breads. I actually prefer Sugar Cane syrup over sorghum, molasses, honey, or maple syrup (yuck). Cane syrup also reminds me of pouring thick rum over pancakes. My wife hates it all.....poor city girl, likes Aunt Jemimah (worse than maple syrup).
And now a word about the worst welfare program of all: government pensions.
"...farms are a strategic asset ..."
I'll second that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.