Permit me to highlight two opposing schools of thought on Rep. Kristi Noem's failure to get the Farm Bill done for South Dakota. If you agree with South Dakota's lone Congresswoman that food is a national security issue and that government intervention in the agricultural market is essential to keeping farmers in business, then you view her inability to move the House GOP leadership's needle on the Farm Bill as just cause for firing her.
But if you're a hard-core conservative, like the nice people who play with Dick Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute, you cheer Noem's impotence. You cheer the gridlock she can't break. You cheer the death of the Farm Bill, because it's an American Boondoggle. That's the name of the website AEI has created to agitate against the Farm Bill. What say these big-money conservatives about the Farm Bill?
It's no exaggeration to say that this year's farm bill is an example of exactly what's wrong with Washington. It embodies the two biggest threats to American free enterprise today: the heavy-handed central planning of statism and competition-destroying beggar-thy-neighbor cronyism. From the $5.6 billion spent annually on crop insurance subsidies to the $1.3 billion we spend on milk subsidies, American agriculture policy is replete with cronyism and special interest subsidies.
It's not fair, it's bad economics and it's bad policy [American Enterprise Institute, "American Boondoggle," downloaded September 17, 2012].
Now I would think AEI would be hollering more about food stamps than crop insurance and subsidies. After all, over 80% of the Farm Bill's spending goes toward nutrition assistance. Corporate welfare for the ag industry makes up just a bit more than a tenth of the spending. Yet AEI appears to be focusing its argument against the Farm Bill on exactly that corporate welfare. AEI's free-market argument even has some Occupy flavor, saying that we taxpayers are forking over our cash to a few "wealthy farm interests" and driving up food costs for everyone:
Ever the skeptic, I can't help thinking AEI is using this seemingly populist fiscal conservative argument against corporate welfare to sneakily support killing food stamps. AEI is no fan of food stamps. But their American Boondoggle propagandist Vince Smith contends that letting the Farm Bill expire won't hurt the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, since its funding comes from other appropriations.
The AEI conservative position against the Farm Bill doesn't give Rep. Noem any cover. She has claimed all along that the Farm Bill's subsidies and crop insurance are essential for South Dakota. Her husband continues to make a living selling crop insurance. In the eyes of the American Enterprise Institute and conservatives of similar ilk, Rep. Noem is exactly what's wrong with government and agriculture. But if she changed her mind, she'd fall to her own critique of lacking conviction. Plus, she'd probably sprain her brain trying to reach beyond her handlers' talking points to enunciate a coherent logical position on conservative free-market principles.
Farm subsidies creating algal blooms that are killing South Dakota waterways, Great Lakes:
http://www.akronlegalnews.com/editorial/4833
The crop insurance subsidy may ballon to 40 Billion according to some reports. Jim Phipps, farmer and TV host for "US Farm Report", provides an excellent essay in his latest column in Top Producer on crop insurance. He says--time to get rid of it. On a recent "the Colbert Report", Stephen Colbert best line was "federal crop insurance is ObamaCare for corn.
I wondered when this would start to happen. If the conservative wing is starting to attach these farm programs directly and severing the relationship between agricultural programs and food programs. Farm Bills of this type are not going to be around long. Unfortunately, there's no discussion about what an appropriate US farm program would look like, just swinging the budgetary ax.
I'd be careful to start attacking farm programs. It's easy to attack programs if you don't understand everything about them, and that is the problem with Washington. I agree that many of the things need to be adjusted. Should farmers pay more of the crop insurance? yes, should there be caps on programs? yes, should direct payments be weaned and capped? yes. The problem is though is there is way too many people that don't know anything about the programs so they just want to cut them. Well then the pro-farm people don't want to give an inch and nothing happens.
Noem is a farmer, so she should be able to explain many of these programs better, adding in her position as freshman leader she should be able to bring more votes to the table.
Drug tests and vaginal ultrasounds for every producer receiving federal assistance?
Yes, Joe, Noem should be able to bring that informed perspective to Washington and help lead everyone to a sensible Farm Bill. But can she?
Charlie, do you have a link to that Phipps article? I can't find it!
try http://www.TopProducer-Online.com September 2012 issue
"Drug tests and vaginal ultrasounds for every producer receiving federal assistance?"
You hit the nail on the head. If people receiving welfare need a drug test so do the farmers
Test them all. I will pee in a cup for my Social Security and bring it to where ever you ask. I can provide a sample every 20 minutes if need be.
Careful what you ask for on the farm bill, 20% +\- actually hits ag.
Again a cheap food policy touted as nat security while my feeble mind stills sees it as the means to end the family farm.
Remember that the farm bill is really a water bill: Noem supports Food, Inc. Organic farms tend to be family farms:
http://www.ourmidland.com/opinion/article_b292e0b0-00db-11e2-a3a0-001a4bcf887a.html
This isn't a big surprise. But it is another indication that farmers that vote Republican are off their rockers. Either that or they really hate themselves. Maybe a little bit of both.
In related news, Jonathan Ellis reports the Washingtonian named Thune the best looking male Senator and Noem the best looking female Rep!
Who needs a farm bill with those results? The Kochs know the way to get SD votes and apparently it isn't through the cranial cavity.
"HIGHMORE, S.D. -- Bruce Roseland runs cattle here in the heart of the South Dakota grasslands, in the same place where his great-grandfather ranched more than a hundred years ago. But today, when he looks out his kitchen window, the prairie that once reached from horizon to horizon is gone."
http://www.startribune.com/local/170850241.html