Why does helping the poor have to be held hostage to wasteful subsidies?
Farm
Bill Chestnuts Read Spanish Version
Why
does helping the poor have to be held hostage to wasteful subsidies?
A
Washington Post editorial published Friday, May 16th.
To
hear Congress tell it, the farm bill that it just passed by
veto-proof margins in both houses is all about helping the poor.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), for example, appeared
with members of the House Asian and Hispanic caucuses to hail its
benefits for minority communities. And about two-thirds of the $289
billion bill will go to nutrition programs for low-income Americans,
including about $10 billion in necessary increases. Corporate welfare
for agribusiness accounts for less than half the price tag. But where
does the Constitution say that Congress has to put aid to the poor in
the same bill with tens of billions in aid to the middle class and
rich? Congress does it that way so that rural members can get urban
and suburban members to sign off on lavish farm subsidies they would
otherwise reject.
The
farm bill is the epitome of old-style Washington politics. A small
number of farm-state senators from both parties demanded its most
wasteful provisions, such as guaranteed payments to big cotton and
rice growers and "disaster relief" for farmers in arid
areas. These members of the less-representative body leveraged their
right to filibuster into billions of dollars for people who are
better off than the average taxpayer. The bill includes only the most
tepid reforms, which, though trumpeted by the bill’s advocates, deny
benefits to only a tiny handful of farms.
While
none of the presidential candidates left the campaign trail to vote
on the bill, one — Republican Sen. John McCain — unequivocally
opposed it. It may not be terribly surprising that Sen. Hillary
Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) hailed the bill’s passage during a campaign
swing through South Dakota. It’s a bit more disappointing to hear
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), running on a promise to oppose politics
as usual, say he applauded the bill. In Iowa last August, Mr. Obama
said, "When the farm bill comes up in the Senate, I will be
fighting to tell all those agribusiness lobbyists that they won’t be
able to count on the multimillion-dollar subsidies they always get
because we’re going to put family farmers first." Yesterday, he
said, "With so much at stake, we cannot make the perfect the
enemy of the good." On this issue, Mr. McCain, not his likely
Democratic opponent, was the apostle of change.
