Farmer Daschle
EDITORIAL Farmer Daschle Farm bill. When those two words crop up, the normal reaction is to tune out. Don't this time. The farm bill that's working its way through Congress is a disaster. It costs...
...What does matter is that those farms are in key states—including Iowa, Texas, South Dakota— and critical congressional districts...
...It enriches the well-to-do...
...For years the United States criticized Europeans for lavishly subsidizing their farmers, giving European farm products an unfair advantage in world markets...
...Like Daschle, they were eager to enact subsidies that might appear unaffordable this year...
...In 1996, Congress approved the Freedom to Farm Act, designed to phase out payments to farmers over seven years...
...Now deficits are foreseen for at least several years...
...The Office of Management and Budget asked them to stop, pointing out their bill would encourage overproduction at a time of low prices, fail to help the farmers most in need, jeopardize overseas markets, and boost spending...
...This wasn't enough for either Democrats, who voted in lockstep, or a good many Republicans...
...And he can only be encouraged by the White House's cave on farm spending...
...The three agree on one thing, and it's a bad thing: Farm subsidies should soar, not by $25 billion or so over 10 years as the Bush administration once proposed, but by more than $70 billion...
...Lugar lost 70-30 in the Senate...
...It marked a historic change from the previous six decades of Washington's setting a target price for crops and paying farmers the difference when the actual market price fell below the target...
...The bill passed...
...He tried to force a farm bill costing more than $80 billion through the Senate last December, though the current bill won't expire until September 30...
...When farm prices dipped, Congress and the White House didn't have the fortitude to stick with Freedom to Farm...
...Last summer, he and Democrats tried to boost "emergency" farm spending from $5.5 billion to $7.5 billion...
...Okay, okay, a Daschle reversal is a pipe dream...
...But Europe is finally inching away from over-subsidizing farmers...
...Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana...
...The White House knew this—and capitulated anyway...
...Bush and Republicans blocked that...
...And it's likely to cause an egregious case of role reversal...
...They left with a letter promising Bush's support for $73.5 billion in increased farm spending...
...Washington also told farmers how much they could grow...
...So the likelihood is a return to the bad old days of bloated subsidies, which will result, Lugar says, in "overproduction, low prices, great instability, and a built-in bubble in land values for which we shall pay at some point...
...It was over Bush's objections that House Republicans cleared a bipartisan farm bill despite there being no urgent need to act...
...The White House could cite less rosy budget projections to reject costly farm subsidies...
...Worse, the United States will catapult itself into the unenviable position once occupied by Europe: world farm-subsidizer-in-chief...
...It costs too much...
...And he should...
...Of course, as the entire planet must know by now, farm subsidies go mainly to well-heeled farmers who don't need them...
...That amount was penciled in last spring in the 2002 budget resolution, based on now-irrelevant budget projections...
...Let's pause for a bit of farm bill history...
...Two-thirds of the subsidies go to 10 percent of America's farmers...
...He wanted to lock in increased spending on farm subsidies before fresh budget projections show a swelling deficit...
...Daschle could concede increased subsidies clash with his vow, in his ballyhooed economic speech on January 4, to battle for fiscal responsibility...
...Why the urgency...
...If the farm bill passed by the House in 2001 were to go into effect, eligible full-time farms would get an average of more than $1 million...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...It's not too late to avert this...
...Rather quickly a problem arose...
...With it, farmers could buy federally backed insurance guaranteeing them at least 80 percent of their average income over the previous five years...
...All this seems to matter little in Washington...
...The Bush administration also had kind words for the reform farm bill of Sen...
...Should the Senate pass Majority Leader Tom Daschle's bill, the United States will be on the verge of doing exactly what the Europeans used to...
...At the time, whopping surpluses were assumed...
...That brought Daschle to the fore...
...Lugar would provide a voucher for every farmer, not just those normally covered...
...The administration could endorse the Lugar bill...
...A lawsuit against the United States in the World Trade Organization will follow...
...One result: four years of record net farm income...
...Instead, for the last four years, they've provided "emergency" payments to farmers...
...But Bush has the political capital to switch...
...The price tag for the Lugar bill, including its hike in spending for food stamps, was about $25 billion...
...After Daschle's farm bill stalled in the Senate in December, a brigade of congressional Republicans from farm states visited the White House...
...Daschle is plowing ahead...
...The bad actors in this drama, going from bad to worse to worst, are President Bush, House Republicans, and Daschle...
...Daschle is insistent about this...
Vol. 7 • January 2002 • No. 19
