In defense of her preferred form of income, Congresswoman Kristi Noem serves up the biggest slice of hypocrisy pie I've heard all month:
America's farmers and ranchers would take too big of a hit in President Obama's proposed deficit-cutting plan released earlier this week, said U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D.
"Agriculture was hit very hard in his plan. ... I was alarmed," Noem told reporters Thursday. "Folks in South Dakota understand the need for sacrifice, but we need to make sure it's not disproportionate to other areas of the federal budget. Agriculture has taken cuts over the last three years already that other areas haven't taken.
...Noem said Obama's plan would cut agriculture subsidies by 22 percent, a far higher rate than other federal programs might expect in cuts.
"We haven't seen anything close to this in any other area of government. We will work hard to tell the story of how we feed this country and feed the world," she said [Denise Ross, "Congresswoman: Obama's Deficit Plan Hits Ag Too Hard," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2011.09.23].
As Noem apes the "tell our story" rhetoric she vageuly remembers from a Big Ag marketing pamphlet, she also exposes her inability to think beyond her self-serving government leechery to form a coherent political philosophy. President Obama heeds her call for smaller government, but when it's the part of government that pays her family's way, she calls it the wrong approach to cutting the deficit.
Noem apparently wants the President to propose across the board cuts to every program. That's why she supports cuts to the military and veterans programs in the same proportion as cuts to social programs and public broadcasting, right?
Rep. Noem tells the press that cutting federal crop insurance "is just the wrong thing to do." Of course she does: her husband makes his living selling that wasteful, fraud-riddled product.
Don't expect Kristi Noem to offer a coherent definition of what she means when she calls for "proportionate" cuts in government programs. Don't expect her to acknowledge that cutting bad programs 22% and cutting good programs by only 5% or 2% or not at all might be perfectly logical. Like an addict, she can't see past the fat government checks that have kept the Noem family farms afloat for the last two decades.
Again, it's the Kristi Noem math. Subsidized crop insurance is one of the major reasons huge crop farmers keep getting bigger, renting more land, raising rents, escalating land prices, driving away opportunities for beginning operators, emptying the countryside. Crop insurance if it was the right thing should have producers paying the full "freight" on costs. The present program distorts free enterprise economics. This comment coming from a so called liberal Democrat lifelong resident and farmer that I am. And krisit Noem is supposed to be the Republican!!
Charlie is absolutely right on this issue. Subsidized crop insurance drives the get bigger trend that dominates agriculture. The big get bigger and make it nearly impossible for a young farmer to get started. It also takes much of the risk out of breaking virgin prairie.
Ditto: The privatized yet government subsidized business of crop insurance is tearing away at the fabric of rural communities, as big farmers gobble up little ones, turning once proud honest independent operators into scheming gamers of the system who jump from one over-compensated insurance salesman to the next one who's got a little looser way of interpreting the rules. Furthermore, because both of the major farm organizations in this state (Farm Bureau and Farmers Union, pretty much pay their bills with crop insurance sales commissions, neither one is stepping up to the plate on telling the truth about this travesty. Shame on them. The gamers win and the little non-gaming farmers lose–lose their land to those who know best how to work the subsidized crop insurance system. Any self respecting Republican ought to gag at the government subsidy shown plainly on their crop insurance premium statement.
So can we get enough rural folks like y'all above to explain to our Congresswoman the damage these federal programs to to rural America? As Charlie notes, shouldn't this be an easy sell to our government-hating Congresswoman?
Cory,
If the congressional offices are monitoring this blog site, they should be embarassed that their own farmer clientle is speaking the truth on this issue. Problem is that the major farm and commodity organizations are all fronting the scam on the insurance issue. This is all about organizations catering to preconceived member wishes and politicians seeking political windfall. "The use of government money on crop insurance is"--now here this KN-" is big government, wasteful spending, and a break down in the free enterprise system."
Congressional offices no...NSA probably.
Good points have been made but I think economies of scale and higher levels of technology have more to do with large farms getting larger than crop insurance. Consolidation in local dairy and pork industries which have no such risk management program should be evidence of this. As it happens, a lot of small and medium sized family farmers do use crop insurance and would be taking on more risk if crop insurance were reduced. Perhaps that is as it should be but I wouldn't expect to see large farms scale back significantly because they have no crop insurance.