The Senate passed the five-year, $300 billion farm bill by a veto-proof vote of 85-15, virtually ensuring the pork-laden, regressive, anti-progressive omnibus legislation will become law. The House passed the bill by an equally large, veto-proof margin on Wednesday, 318-106.
"Worst President In History" George W. Bush opposes this bill and is expected to veto it. This may be one of the only times, if not the only time, in the history of his Presidency when Bush is on the side of sanity. Congress, on the other hand, has frequently proven unreliable, but this is nonetheless disappointing from a body nominally controlled by good-government Democrats.
What's the big deal? Mike Lillis at The Washington Independent sums it up:
Millionaire farmers will continue getting taxpayer subsidies, sugar producers will inherit more government protections and foreign food aid will take a whack[...]
Not insignificant, agribusiness has donated roughly $31 million to Washington lawmakers in the 2008 election cycle alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, making it one of the most powerful lobbies in the nation.
[...]
Under the bill, for example, individuals earning up to $750,000 in farm income and $500,000 in non-farm income are eligible for taxpayer subsidies. That means a farming couple could feasibly take in $2.5 million a year and still receive federal assistance.
Critics also point out that farm operators -- who number more than 2.1 million -- already earn far more than other Americans, with average household incomes estimated to be roughly $90,000 in 2008, according to the Agriculture Department.
"This bill was well designed to avoid every opportunity for serious reform of wasteful, outdated subsidy programs while actually piling on additional layers of unnecessary spending," Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) said in a statement. "Commodity prices are through the roof and yet we are still funneling billions of dollars to farm households making up to $2.5 million a year in profit."
[...]
One controversial provision creates a new program to have the government buy surplus sugar from the marketplace and put it toward ethanol production. Chris Edwards, director of tax policy at the conservative Cato Institute, said that that provision hurts consumers twice: First, when their taxpayer dollars fund the program; and later, when it reduces market supply, thus keeping sugar prices artificially high on the grocery store shelves.
Democratic support for such provisions is puzzling, Edwards said, for it bucks the party's populist approach. "It's a reverse Robin Hood scenario -- to the Democrats' shame," he said, adding that the overall bill is "an abomination."
The White House agrees, arguing that the proposal is too expensive, too generous to wealthy farmers and relies on budget gimmicks to cover the costs.
"It does not target help for the farmers who really need it," Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said in a statement, "and it increases the size and cost of government while jeopardizing the future of legitimate farm programs by damaging the credibility of farm bills in general."
The administration also blasted the proposal for continuing to prohibit the U.S. foreign food aid program from buying crops overseas. Aid groups have long-argued that allowing those dollars to purchase food abroad would expedite delivery to the people in need -- something the White House supports. Agricultural interests, however, have successfully convinced lawmakers of both parties not to change the rules of the $2.1 billion program.
Another foreign food aid program -- the Dole-McGovern International Food for Education program -- also took a hit under the new farm bill. That initiative, named for former Sens. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and George S. McGovern (D-S.D.), encourages low-income kids overseas to attend school by providing them free lunches. Its current budget is roughly $100 million per year, but the new law slashes that figure to about $60 million.
(emphasis added)
Yes, you read that right; President Bush is arguing for more and better foreign food aid, while Congress maintains the currently inefficient system in order to satisfy the whims of their agribusiness masters, who have generously bestowed $31 million to them in campaign funds this year.
Wonder why we have chronic obesity? Why food prices are skyrocketing? Why healthy fruits and vegetables are more expensive than unhealthy transfats, fast food and corn-based-ethanol-infused gasoline? Why schoolchildren who receive free lunches don't have the choice to eat healthy and nutritious food, but are instead fed things that ensure lifelong chronic health problems? Why our food is made in the least efficient way and by creating the greatest amounts of greenhouse gases possible? It's all because of the farm bill.
Congress just gave us five more years of the same problems.
We need more campaign finance reform. We need more limits on lobbyists' influence over our representatives. We need an environmentally-conscious, internationally-conscious, and health-conscious agricultural policy.
Update: All three remaining presidential candidates, Senators Clinton, McCain, and Obama, are cowards for missing the most important vote of the year. Cowards.
Only Democratic Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed, both from Rhode Island, voted against the farm bill. 13 Republican Senators also opposed it.
Let me be clear: the farm bill does contain a lot of great funding, including the free and subsidized school breakfast and lunch programs, as well as the all-important food stamp nutrition program. Those are great, and there were actually pretty great and beneficial reforms to those programs in this year's bill. But without massive reform to the subsidy program, as well as to the foreign food aid program, this maintains a system of regressive support for millionaire landowners (many of who are not even farmers) and huge agribusiness.
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