[Vision2020] Welfare for the Wealthy

Art Deco art.deco.studios at gmail.com
Wed Jun 5 06:26:22 PDT 2013


 [image: Opinionator - A Gathering of Opinion From Around the
Web]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/>
  June 4, 2013, 9:12 pm Welfare for the Wealthy By MARK
BITTMAN<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/mark-bittman/>

The critically important Farm Bill
[1]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/welfare-for-the-wealthy/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130605&pagewanted=print#1>is
impenetrably arcane, yet as it worms its way through Congress,
Americans
who care about justice, health or the environment can parse enough of it to
become outraged.

The legislation costs around $100 billion annually, determining policies on
matters that are strikingly diverse. Because it affects foreign trade and
aid, agricultural and nutritional research, and much more, it has global
implications.

The Farm Bill finances food stamps (officially SNAP, or Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program) and the subsidies that allow industrial ag
and monoculture — the “spray and pray” style of farming — to maintain their
grip on the food “system.”

The bill is ostensibly revisited, refashioned and renewed every five years,
but this round, scheduled to be re-enacted last year, has been in
discussion since 2010, and a final bill is not in sight. Based on the
current course of Congress it seems there will be an extension this fall,
as there was in 2012. Extensions allow funding changes for individual
“titles,” as programs are sometimes called; last year’s extensions didn’t
do much damage, but this year’s threaten the well-being of tens of millions
of Americans.

I routinely talk to people who monitor the Farm Bill, a task that’s
practically a full-time job. One is David Beckmann, president of Bread for
the World <http://www.bread.org/>, a principled anti-hunger group. Another
is Craig Cox, a senior vice president at the Environmental Working
Group<http://www.ewg.org/>,
among the best NGOs on agricultural policy and just plain consumer advice
regarding the various plagues of industrial agriculture.

These people and many others are devoted to feeding the hungry, protecting
the environment and boosting sensible agricultural policies, yet they avoid
the fatalism that causes some to throw up their hands.

The current versions of the Farm Bill in the Senate (as usual, not as
horrible as the House) and the House (as usual, terrifying) could hardly be
more frustrating. The House is proposing $20 billion in
cuts<http://www.justharvest.org/index.php/component/content/article/37-welfare-justice/226-stop-cuts-to-food-stamps>to
SNAP — equivalent, says Beckmann, to “almost half of all the
charitable
food assistance that food banks and food charities provide to people in
need.” [2]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/welfare-for-the-wealthy/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130605&pagewanted=print#2>

Deficit reduction is the sacred excuse for such cruelty, but the first
could be achieved without the second. Two of the most expensive programs
are food stamps, the cost of which has justifiably soared since the
beginning of the Great Recession
[3]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/welfare-for-the-wealthy/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130605&pagewanted=print#3>,
and direct subsidy payments.

This pits the ability of poor people to eat — not well, but sort of enough
— against the production of agricultural commodities. That would be a
difficult choice if the subsidies were going to farmers who could be
crushed by failure, but in reality most direct payments go to those who
need them least.

Among them is Congressman Stephen Fincher, Republican of Tennessee, who
justifies SNAP cuts by quoting 2 Thessalonians 3:10:  “For even when we
were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work should
not eat.”

Even if this quote were not taken out of context — whoever wrote 2
Thessalonians was chastising not the poor but those who’d stopped working
in anticipation of the second coming — Fincher ignores the fact that
Congress is a secular body that supposedly doesn’t base policy on an
ancient religious text that contradicts
itself<http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Inconsistencies_in_the_Bible>more
often than not. Not that one needs to break a sweat countering his
“argument,” but 45 percent of food stamp recipients are
children<http://www.fns.usda.gov/ora/menu/Published/SNAP/FILES/Participation/2011Characteristics.pdf>,
and in 2010, the U.S.D.A. reported that as many as 41 percent are working
poor<http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/09/18/hannity-omits-the-food-stamp-facts-most-recipie/189991>.


This would be just another amusing/depressing example of an elected
official ignoring a huge part of his constituency (about one in
seven<http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/04/05/some-15-of-u-s-receives-food-stamps/>Americans
rely on food stamps, though it’s one in five in Tennessee, the
second highest rate in the South), were not Fincher himself a hypocrite.

For the God-fearing Fincher is one of the largest recipients of U.S.D.A.
farm subsidies in Tennessee
history<http://farm.ewg.org/top_recips.php?fips=47000&progcode=totalfarm&page=1>;
he raked in $3.48 million in taxpayer cash from 1999 to 2012, $70,574 last
year alone. The average SNAP recipient in Tennessee gets $132.20 in food
aid a month; Fincher received $193 a day. (You can eat pretty well on
that.) [4]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/welfare-for-the-wealthy/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130605&pagewanted=print#4>

Fincher is not alone in disgrace, even among his Congressional
colleagues<http://www.ewg.org/release/members-congress-received-238k-farm-subsidies>,
but he makes a lovely poster boy for a policy that steals taxpayer money
from the poor and so-called middle class to pay the rich, while propping up
a form of agriculture that’s unsustainable and poisonous.

Knowing that direct subsidy payments are under the gun, our clever and
cynical representatives are offering a bait-and-switch policy that will
make things worse, and largely replace subsidy payments with an enhanced
form of crop insurance — paid for by us, of course — which will further
reduce risks for commodity farmers. As Craig Cox explained, “The proposed
crop insurance would allow — no, encourage — big farmers to plant corn on
hillsides, in flood-threatened areas, even in drought-stricken areas, with
subsidized premiums and deductibles, and see a big payout if” — should we
say “when”? — “the crop fails or is damaged.”

You should get such a deal on insurance: the premiums and deductibles are
subsidized and there’s no limit to what can be paid, so bigger farms and
bigger risks reap bigger rewards in the event of failure, even if that was
a failure of judgment.
[5]<http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/welfare-for-the-wealthy/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130605&pagewanted=print#5>

Even without boosting the program, crop insurance payments came in at a
whopping $17 billion last
year<http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21578688-awful-farm-bill-faces-opposition-trough>.
That was unusually high because of the drought, but only a climate-change
denier believes that was the last drought we’re going to see. And if you
think any of this can be justified because it supports the insurance
industry and creates American jobs … well, no: most of the subsidized
insurance providers are based offshore.

We are so used to welfare for the wealthy that most of us, sadly, shrug it
off. But a Farm Bill extension does give an opportunity to end direct
subsidy payments, rein in crop insurance, and protect the programs that are
critical to our national identity and benefit those who deserve it.

It’s a simple solution, says Cox: “The legislators could decide not to
reauthorize direct payments and invest some of the savings in good programs
while still hitting budget reduction targets.” The Congressional Budget
Office reports that this action would save about $5 billion per year, far
more than the proposed potential savings of cutting SNAP and other
beneficial programs while enhancing crop insurance. (The Senate proposes
saving less than $2 billion annually, the House just over $3 billion.)

In other words, without hurting conservation or poor people or foreign aid
or progressive and traditional farming, you could achieve targeted savings
simply by letting direct payments go away and refusing to boost the crop
insurance scam.

Boosters of crop insurance on steroids simply want a government guarantee
of farm revenue. Maybe you don’t want to scream “communism!” but it’s the
type of guarantee that no other industry in this country would dare to
dream of.

Avoid fatalism: Call your representative (or at least support those
agencies that are doing so) and insist that payments to people like Fincher
be ended without replacing them with other subsidies to big ag. Let’s at
least try to protect the poor, the environment and our national health.

The alternative is to wait for the second coming.

1. This year going by the fun names of “Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk
Management Act<http://agriculture.house.gov/bill/hr-6083-federal-agriculture-reform-and-risk-management-act>”
(House version) and “Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs
Act<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s954>”
(Senate). Note that the titles tell us what matters to each of these
bodies, and that food doesn’t cut it in the House.

2. “People in need,” by the way, outnumber food stamp recipients, since not
everyone eligible for food stamps signs up. So really it’s a bit worse than
it sounds, and it sounds bad enough.

3. By design, it is precisely when people are falling economically that an
economic safety net is most necessary, and food stamps are an entitlement:
if you qualify, you get ’em, no matter how big the budget line grows.

4. It actually gets worse. Here’s Fincher
quoted<http://www.cato.org/blog/award-most-hypocritical-performance-member-congress-goes>in
the International Business Times: “[T]he role of citizens, of
Christians, of humanity, is to take care of each other,” Fincher said at a
Memphis event last week. “But not for Washington to steal money from those
in the country and give it to others in the country. Our role is out of
control.”

5. So: Buy the most expensive car you can afford, even one you can’t
afford. Premiums and deductibles are cheap. Wearing a seat belt and a
helmet, wreck it. Voilà!


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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