What would you call a government program that guaranteed that you would receive 90% of your average revenue? There's a phrase for it, "corporate welfare." However, politicians call this farm bill give-away the Average Crop Revenue (ACRE) program.
There are so many scandals sucking the air out the room that there's hardly any space for publicity about bad spending bills. So the farm bill is sneaking through the weeds, and the budget hawks can't get attention. But some people are watching and writing. And here are a few with selected excerpts.
Reform has been slow to come for a couple of reasons. The first is demosclerosis: A rich and powerful minority is highly motivated to lobby for the continuation of its benefits – benefits that do not much inconvenience most of the public on a day-to-day basis, which therefore has little reason to lobby against them.
The second reason is the unholy pact between farm-state interests and urban ones. For reasons far beyond the ken of mortal men, the largest portion of the quinquennial farm bill as measured in dollars has nothing to do with farming. Roughly 80 percent of its outlays go to food stamps. Rolling the two completely separate issues into a single bill ensures that lawmakers from conservative states will support handouts for city folk, and lawmakers for city folk will support handouts to farm interests.
The Costly and Outdated Farm Bill:
One of the most important reforms would be to separate these programs [food stamps and farm subsidies] into two different bills. This would make it more likely to get reform of agriculture policy, instead of politicians using these different issues with their different interest groups to maintain the status quo. ...
The costliest farm program is crop insurance, yet Congress does little to address these costs.
When farmers buy insurance, 62 percent of their premiums are paid for courtesy of the American taxpayers. Unlike other farm programs, there's no limit on the total subsidy received by farmers. According to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO), a $40,000 limit on premium subsidies would have saved taxpayers $1 billion in 2011.
Fake savings: The 2013 House farm bill:
The data demonstrate that the House bill, with its crop insurance and PLC provisions, is essentially a bait and switch proposal. It exposes the taxpayer to substantial risk while, in combination with other federal subsidy programs, virtually guaranteeing that most farmers will always receive at least 90 percent of their expected farm incomes.
The only partisan split on this is over who gets the largess.
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