A Farm Bill Failure

Alright, it's finally happening. After 16 months, our Democratic Congress has ceded the moral high ground to President Bush. The vehicle for this ethical implosion? The farm bill.

The farm bill? That's still going on? Yup, even longer than the Democratic primary race. I've lost track of how many extensions Congress has given itself (four?), but the upshot is that the bill is finally about to come out of the conference committee. Both houses of Congress will then vote on it, and, if it passes, Bush will promptly veto it. Sigh.

The trouble is, this time he may be justified.

The AP provides a good (incomplete) list of what this bill would do:

• Increase the nutrition programs, including food stamps and emergency domestic food assistance, by more than $10 billion over ten years. It would also expand a program to provide fresh fruits and vegetables to schoolchildren.

• Expand subsidies for certain crops, extend dairy programs and increase loan rates for sugar producers. It includes language which calls on the federal government to buy surplus sugar and sell it to ethanol producers, where it would be used in a mixture with corn.

• Make small cuts to direct payments, which are distributed to some producers no matter how much they grow.

• Cut a per-gallon ethanol tax credit that supports blending fuel with the corn-based additive from 51 cents to 45 cents in favor of more money for cellulosic ethanol, which is made from plant matter.

• Add dollars for conservation programs designed to protect farmland.

• Require that meats and other fresh foods be labeled with their country of origin.

• Eliminate loopholes that now allow farmers to collect subsidies for multiple farm businesses.

• Cut expanded food assistance for an international school lunch program that was passed in the House farm bill last year. While the House had included more than $800 million in permanent dollars for the McGovern-Dole program, the final bill includes less than $100 million.

• Pay farmers for weather-related farm losses out of a new $3.8 billion disaster assistance fund. Schafer on Thursday criticized the program, which he says questions the government's investments in existing crop insurance for farmers and discredits farm programs.

• Give tax breaks to owners of race horses, a provision added by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Animal rights groups criticized the provision, saying Congress shouldn't help the industry in the wake of a Kentucky Derby entrant collapsing and having to be euthanized last weekend.

Horses aside, here are the big problems with the bill:
1) Big Sugar is one of the most heavily protected interests in America. It doesn't need price supports, and, as an intensely polluting industry, sure doesn't need incentive to produce absolutely as much as possible, with the federal government picking up the bill, then selling the product (at a loss) to ethanol producers. Taxpayer expense would be unlimited.

With food prices high and rising around the world, due significantly to a rechanneling of food crops into energy production, it may seem useful to spur production of other crops (beside corn) for energy, reducing the demand pressure on corn and letting corn prices drop back down. But there are far better ways to do this than expanding already ridiculous subsidies on all sugar production. And while food prices are high in the U.S.,the real crisis is abroad, and this sugar scheme would only serve to reinforce a global food economy that puts poor countries at the mercy of hungry Americans.

2) This newest iteration of the bill would reduce the maximum income a farmer can have and still receive subsidies. Under the 2002 law, the maximum was $5 million for a married couple. The Senate's earlier bill would have kept this as is (I smell a Baucus), but the bill coming out of conference will cap it at $1.5 million. An improvement, to be sure. But consider the following counterproposal: $200,000. Sound like an advancement? A good step toward helping small farmers without using great gobs of taxpayer money to pad the pockets of the wealthy? Well hold on to your butts, boys and girls, because that proposal's coming from the Bush Administration. Sky-high subsidies are a big reason he's going to veto this thing. Now ask yourself: why isn't your Democratic senator picking up this proposal and running with it?

3) If you were paying attention, an awkward hyphenate in one of the bullet points may have perplexed you. McGovern-Dole? Yes, friends, that's George McGovern and Bob Dole, the two contemporary legistlative titans turned failed presidential candidates. As they say for themselves in a Post editorial, "How can the world's hungriest schoolchildren be denied meals while the farm bill being debated in a House-Senate conference provides millions in subsidies for wealthy farmers? That's what Congress proposes. In all fairness, it should not become law."

4) The $3.8 billion disaster assistance fund is a solution in search of a problem, an unnecessary addendum to the wealth of crop insurance programs American farmers already have. It's election year politics brought to you by the king of perpetual election year politics -- Montana's own Max Baucus, who said he wouldn't support the bill without this provision. This toothy goldplated plastercast showboat monument of a program is the main reason cited by the Department of Agriculture for the president's impending veto. Meanwhile, compare this pricetag to the cost of funding the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program at current levels: only $840 million over five years.

5) The bullet points miss something the bill doesn't do: effect an important change in how we deliver food aid. Currently, when we give food aid through USAID, it comes almost always from U.S.-grown food, packed onto U.S. ships and lugged across the ocean. Not only is this absurdly inefficient, giving us much less humanitarian bang for our food aid buck, but it actually serves to suppress local agriculture in the hungriest places on earth. Nevertheless, we continue the practice because it allows USAID in procuring food to buy price-supported American produce, just to funnel more cash into the big pockets of wealthy American farmers and shippers during times of greatest crisis.

For this reason, NGO aid organizations like CARE and Oxfam are beginning to refuse American relief from USAID that comes in the form of American food shipped overseas. It's far better for the needy, for the environment, and for third-world agriculture to give aid -- this is supposed to be about aid, right? -- in the form of money to buy local and regional food. Of course these organizations also then work to get that food into the hands of those who need it.

President Bush proposed a modest minimum of food-related aid to come in the form of money and local procurements, at 25% of total. That still means 75% of food aid could be unloaded off American ships. But apparently that's not enough for our noble Democrats in Congress, who rejected the concept entirely.

When most people call this 110th Congress a failure, they're usually talking about its failure to do anything about our disastrous war in Iraq. It's important, though, to understand that this Congress has been a failure on virtually every measure imaginable. So when you're calculating whether the protracted battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama is good or bad for the party, consider that at least it's kept our minds (and the media) off Congress almost entirely.