One of this week's major political stories was the narrow passage in the House of a farm bill which retained farm subsidies, but cut funding for food stamps. The Senate will not pass a similar bill, nor will the president sign it, so it won't go anywhere. But it has led to a broad range of commentary you - 2305 students anyway - might find applicable to the class.
- House Committee on Agriculture, Farm Bill.
- CBO cost estimate of HR 2624.
- The vote on the bill.
- From Thomas: Bill summary and status.
Here's a sampling of stories about the bill, more to come:
- Background from the NYT:
- House Committee on Agriculture, Farm Bill.
- CBO cost estimate of HR 2624.
- The vote on the bill.
- From Thomas: Bill summary and status.
Here's a sampling of stories about the bill, more to come:
- Background from the NYT:
By splitting farm policy from food stamps, the House effectively ended the decades-old political marriage between urban interests concerned about nutrition and rural areas who depend on farm subsidies.
The assertive rank-and-file Republicans in the House, though, sank a bipartisan farm bill by amending it to cut $20 billion from food stamps over 10 years. This week, House leaders stripped food stamps from the bill altogether, stunning the farm lobby. With a lot of arm twisting and derisive commentary from Democrats, leaders squeezed a bill through the House 216-208 (with six Republicans and five Democrats not voting.) All the Democratic votes were no.
No one’s quite sure what happens next. House Ag Chairman Frank Lucas (R., Okla.) promised a separate food stamp bill as soon as he can achieve consensus. Mr. Lucas and House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), who wants to enact a farm bill, probably will try to get some food stamp bill through the House so they can get to a Senate-House conference and return with a compromise that will draw enough Democratic votes to offset Republican rank-and-file opposition.
But the House vote underscored a fundamental political reality in the House: A substantial bloc of Republicans, many of them relative newcomers, are determined to force confrontations as they press for sweeping changes to the food stamp program and other federal benefit programs long cherished by Democrats as opposed to pressing hard and then settling for compromises that pull policy slightly to the right. (One aside: As both conservative and liberal think tanks observed this week, details of the farm bill suggest that House Republican vows to cut government spending exempt farm subsidies.)
- The Cato Institute is critical of the bill:
But in passing the farm bill, Republicans demonstrated that they are just fine with bloated welfare programs as long as those welfare payments go to well-healed special interests.
In 2011, the last year for which full data is available, the average farm household had an income of $87,289, 25 percent higher than the average for all U.S. households. And about a third of the farm subsidies go to the largest four percent of farm operators. If you want to see real “welfare queens,” look no further than Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyler Farms, and Riceland Foods.
