When President Obama signed the Farm Bill into law Friday, did he know what was in it? Having called income inequality the defining challenge of our time, wouldn’t he veto a bill that perpetuates millions in subsidies to three agribusiness families, favoring the super-rich over the poor?
Some have suggested that just saying no to this travesty, after Congress failed to agree to a farm bill for two years, would have backed up his campaign words. Surely nobody has read all 1,500 pages, aside from the staffers who are paid to do it. Journalists have been copying each other, reiterating the few portions they’ve heard about. One major item getting pub: subsidies paid to farmers whether or not they actually grow crops have now been cut, in favor of crop insurance. Well, that’s only part of the story.
The above-mentioned subsidies to cotton and peanut growers totaling billions are still there. Crop insurance sounds reasonable until one realizes it’s a gift to insurance companies. While farmers pay for disaster coverage every year, the government will help with their premiums. Really? Was it the insurance industry that lobbied for this or farmers who now stand to gain more than the value of the former direct payments?
Part of the compromise was only a one-percent cut to food stamps or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). They say that means $90 less per month in benefits for struggling families.
I looked up what Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) had to say about that. Her opinion piece, “Not Your Father’s Farm Bill” published on HuffPost, says “NONE (her caps) of the damaging policies put forward by Republicans that would eliminate SNAP for millions” are included. “No one can be removed from SNAP and all families will get 100 percent of benefits under the present program.”
So what about the $90 less per month? Stabenow says that’s covered in the fraud and misuse clause. The cuts address an unintended loophole for a utility credit the recipient doesn’t have. The Washington Post called this loophole a “black eye” on SNAP that is “a gift to SNAP’s perennial opponents.” The New York Times agreed.
The new bill requires anyone getting less than $20 a year in home heating assistance to show they actually have a heating bill. For recipients getting more than $20, nothing will change. I think this has to do with some states inflating their SNAP benefits. How this equates to $90 less per family is above my pay grade.
However, the bill doubles SNAP benefits to low-income families buying healthy produce at farmers markets; increases funding for food banks and provides financing for grocery stores in underserved areas, according to Stabinow, who chairs the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.
Meanwhile, an editorial in the Mason City (Iowa) Globe Gazette was negative, saying the $956 billion bill made them “yearn for gridlock.” While noting its pluses, they label SNAP cuts of $8 billion affecting 850,000 families as “either greed or just plain meanness.” Compromise apparently doesn’t mean cutting everywhere equally. While some farmers lost their direct payments, they got instead a generous crop insurance incentive, which could pay them more than the old subsidies.
Big corporate farms win; small farmers lose.
The New York Times article said since the bill isn’t as bad as it could have been, it’s not worth rolling the dice that the next congress wouldn’t make it worse.
In supporting the bill, Stabenow admits once enacted, old subsidies die hard. “They’re the zombies of the federal budget.” But the bill also invests more in fruits and vegetables and in farmers who want to transition to organics, and creates food hubs to help hospitals and schools buy more locally produced food. It also spends more to protect land and clean water than it spends on food commodity programs. “It’s an historic agreement between environmental and farm organizations to require any farmer receiving crop insurance support to use environmentally sound practices,” Stabenow said.
So, who’s right? Do the benefits outweigh the sops to corporate interests? Is it really impossible to rid the budget of “zombie” subsidies?
Decades ago, I knew a farmer who took the federal farm program for millions. He leased a poor farm with many acres of cotton allowance, which he transferred to his rich farm where he could grow five times as many bales per acre. Then he got the feds to pay him not to grow cotton on the poor farm. Talk about double dipping!
The law was changed the next year.Probably gridlock would dictate five years today. Bipartisan? Well, maybe not so much.