Jay Ambrose
Pork politics all that's needed to keep farm subsidies growing
By: Jay Ambrose
Examiner Columnist
April 28, 2009
President Obama has been saying let’s go for it, let’s spend, spend, spend, but lately had a money-saving thought – to cut back by billions on farm subsidies. No sirree, Bob, said some congressional Democrats, quickly bringing that flirtation with fiscal responsibility to an end.
To be fair to the farm-state Democrats who stood tall for corporate welfare, it should be said that Obama officials were a bit too cute in their framing of the issue. They said we’ll continue to shovel funds to the little guy, while drawing the generosity line at those whose gross income is $500,000 and above. That makes it sound like you’re going exclusively after the rich, a favorite pastime in the White House.
But as those farm state senators and representatives could tell you, a number of farmers making modest incomes have a gross take of $500,000 or more. They have to spend huge amounts to produce crops and get them to market. These farmers aren’t rich. It’s just the way the business often works.
At the same time, of course, large numbers of those getting the handouts are in fact big-time agribusinesses and it is no more crucial to support the smaller farms than it is to support any other kind of small business.
Many could do as well or better than now as they adjusted to new, phased-in realities. It is certainly possible that, without help, some might be at least slightly more likely to fold than with it, just as hardware stores, roofing companies and other non-subsidized businesses can sometimes fold.
Although it may seem strange to say it in this era of the bailout, such risks in commercial life help allocate resources where they do the most good and keep our economy productive, efficient and a blessing to the nation as a whole.
The only thing different about farms from these other businesses is sentiment and politics. Before we were a high tech industrial and service economy with under 2 percent of the labor force employed in growing food, we were agricultural.
Farm life is associated in our minds with some of our most revered values. In some kinds of farming – far from all – subsidies are taken for granted, and politicians from well-greased farm areas fear repercussions if they forget as much.
None of this amounts to a real excuse for what the Democrats did, however. In the end, the subsidies are just another pork game, a drag on the economy and a pocketbook insult to the vast majority who are not farmers.
They are also hugely unfair to starvation-worried, Third World farmers who can’t compete with European and American farmers supported in part by millions of taxpayers.
You might think concern for the common good both in the nation and the world would outweigh the impulse of legislators from either party to serve their career prospects through bribery. But you would be wrong.
Budget committees in both houses of Congress have thrown out any farm subsidy reductions whatsoever in drafts of what the coming budget will contain, putting the kibosh on decade-long savings estimated at $9.5 billion.
That may seem a pittance next to the extraordinary expenditures President Obama has in mind for us, but it is a pittance that carries a very large lesson.
What we are reminded of is that federal spending programs are very easy to start and almost impossible to stop, that even small steps toward fiscal sanity are thwarted by the irresponsible habits of Congress and that an Obama splurge could be ruinously with us for a very, very long time with little or no mitigation.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies.
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