NTU has been hard at work opposing the massively wasteful, nearly-$1 trillion food and farm welfare legislation that Washington knows as "the Farm Bill." In some of the best news we've had on the issue in weeks, The Hill reported today that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is leery of the pork-filled legislation and could hold the key to protecting taxpayers from it. We've been watching the markup debate over 100 amendments unfold with shock and horror, as positive measures to reduce government intervention in the dairy and sugar markets failed at the hands of special-interest minded Members of the Agriculture Committee. But if Boehner comes out forcefully in opposition to the bill, taxpayers could be spared from its awful provisions in favor of a one-year extension which would allow a presumably more fiscally responsible 2013 Congress to take it up.
Boehner is no stranger to Farm Bill opposition. He opposed the travesties that were the last two versions and has always expressed his distaste for the incredible amounts of wasteful spending that get packed into them. Despite the different makeup of this Congress, the bill they came up with is sadly no different. It eliminates direct payments made for certain commodity crops, but then plows virtually all of the savings into new subsidy programs to effectively guarantee revenue for farmers. The end result, when combined with an exploding food stamp program that has doubled in size since 2008, is a bill that costs upwards of $900 billion and does almost nothing to truly begin to wean farmers off of their sweet, sweet taxpayer money.
The bill is complicated, but the issue is simple. Farm income exceeded $100 billion last year. Average farm household income has consistently grown faster than the average American household, particularly post-1995 (when the "We swear, this is the Farm Bill to end all Farm Bills!" charade began in earnest). Fewer than one in 200 farms fail per year. Crop prices are at or near record highs. Meanwhile, our fiscal challenges have never been larger with a rapidly-increasing $15.8 trillion national debt. As a result, we have a more fiscally conservative House of Representatives than we've had in years.
One could scarcely dream up a better time to truly reform farm programs. Thankfully, it appears that Speaker Boehner realizes that this bill doesn't even come close to doing that. We should encourage him to do the right thing and shelve this monstrosity for good.