Farm Bill veto would be richly deserved
Welcome to OpenMarket.org! Please consider Subscribing to our RSS feed, so you don’t miss any of the news and analysis brought to you by CEI’s policy experts.
Right after House-Senate conferees announced that they had reached agreement on a new farm bill yesterday, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture said that President Bush would veto it because it didn’t reform wasteful farm programs, continued to provide subsidies to rich farmers, and still used some budget machinations to hide the costs.
Indeed, the boondoggle bill deserves a White House rejection for its almost $300 billion of farm programs that will be paid for by taxpayers and consumers. Farm bills, however, no matter how wasteful, have a way of surviving, and this legislation may be no exception, since it’s a case study of bipartisanship gone bad.
Besides the sugar provisions we’ve written about here and here, the biofuels programs’ grants and loan guarantees, plus moneys for R&D and “energy efficiency” projects, together with the extension of the tariff on imported ethanol, will continue to exacerbate the food vs. fuel program.
Re: Sugar and the farm bill
Hans–
Glad you posted about the bloated farm bill and how sugar is treated. A “Sweetheart Deal” – how right the Washington Post is in its editorial today blasting farm bill proposals that would make the U.S. sugar program an even sweeter deal for producers while consumers foot the bill.
The current sugar program – which has expired but has been extended with other 2002 farm programs — is a system of price supports, domestic production restrictions, and restrictions on sugar imports. The new bill would distort the market even further. It would raise the price supports for U.S. sugar cane and sugar beets, thus guaranteeing sugar producers twice the world price; provide domestic producers with 85 percent of the U.S. market, and protect them from competition by turning imported sugar into ethanol. The Sweetener Users — a coalition of food, beverage, and confectioners pushing for reform of the sugar program — estimates that the farm bill will cost consumers about $2 billion over five years.
That sweet deal is one that the Bush Administration doesn’t like and is one of the issues that may indeed provoke a presidential veto. The Administration thinks real reform of the programs was needed, and income caps for who can receive subsidies should be lowered. But farm programs, especially sugar, get heavy support from their lobbyists and from Congress. Add to that the fact that the majority of farm bill money goes for food stamps and nutrition programs – which almost guarantees that urban, suburban, and rural representatives also want the bill to pass.
In a period where farmers are making unprecedented profits, and consumers are feeling the pinch of higher food prices, it should be a time when real reform of farm programs would have a chance. But don’t count on it.
-
About Us
OpenMarket.org is the staff blog of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. We believe that people improve their lives not through government regulation, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace. -
Search
-
Categories
Agriculture
Bureaucrash
CEI in the City
Culture
Economic Liberty
Energy
Environment
Global Warming
Healthcare Reform
Insurance
Intellectual Property
International
Legal
Mobility
Nanny State
Nano & Biotech
Odds & Ends
Personal Liberty
Politics as Usual
Precaution & Risk
Privacy
Sanctimony
Tech & Telecom
Trade
-
RSS Center
