The Farm Bill agreed to by the House today is flawed farm policy that will continue to throw billions of dollars at the biggest, most profitable farms. This vote will boost agriculture spending by more than 50 percent and drive up the budget deficit while continuing the national travesty of shifting the lion's share of federal aid away from those who most need the support.
This is a disingenuous attempt by many farm state lawmakers to bring home the bacon in an election year, and represents little more than a politically motivated grab bag of special interest handouts. This is the biggest corporate welfare handout in recent history. In coming years, most economists expect farm spending to rise substantially because the legislation encourages over-planting and overproduction which will lead to a glut of products on the market and are certain to drive prices down.
The sad reality is that by driving production and subsidies up and prices down, this legislation will push small farms out of business. Ever vulnerable to shifts in costs and increasingly dependent on subsidies, these farmers will continue to sell their land to the larger producers.
Unlimited taxpayer-financed subsidies for some crops encourage the largest farms to keep producing more in an endless quest for even more federal funds. This insatiable thirst has led the largest growers (and subsidy recipients) to gobble up as much land as they can from the many small family farm operations who can no longer stay in business.
In final negotiations over the bill, a $275,000 payment cap for farmers was eliminated and taxpayer handouts to factory farms for clean up were increased to $450,000.
By only providing crumbs to family farmers of the subsidy pie, it is inevitable that in the near future Congress will have to fix this farm bill fiasco.
Taxpayers for Common Sense Action, the direct advocacy arm of TCS publishes an annual scorecard of how lawmakers vote on fiscal and spending issues, sent a letter to all House members saying the Farm Bill vote in so important to taxpayers that it will be counted double in the 2002 Scorecard.:
