2-4-96
New York Times
Ending Farm Welfare
Congress may be squandering a rare chance to end welfare for
farmers as the United States has known it for half a century. A
Republican bill to wean farmers from subsidies and move them toward a
market-based system has been stalled by Senate Democrats and threatened
with a Presidential veto. It deserves Democratic support.
The Agricultural Marketing Transition Act, sometimes called the
"freedom to farm" bill, would scrap Federal subsidy programs that reward
farmers for not planting. Its sponsors recognize that the subsidies,
which began as aid to the depression-racked breadbasket, have long been a
program of bloated benefits that prop up food prices. Budget austerity
and a spreading antipathy toward welfare for business and the well-off
have combined to bring farm reform bills to the House and Senate floors.
Under the plan a series of annual fixed but declining payments
would let farmers plant the crops of their choice while easing the shock
of land values now pegged to subsidy entitlements. Those transitional
payments are a form of welfare but they enable government and agriculture
to normalize the industry by the year 2002.
Both houses approved this act as part of the overall budget
reconciliation bill, but after the measure was vetoed, the farm bill came
back. It seems to have enough House votes for passage. In a nearly
party-line vote, the bill fell seven votes short of debate-ending cloture
in the Senate, sending both parties into negotiations that could water
down the Senate version.
The White House may see political gain with farm states in
raising objections with the bill, mainly complaints that rural
development programs and other largesse are too severely cut, but the
national interest calls for bipartisan cooperation to end decades of
subservience to farm lobbyists. Even the politics are changing as
farmers realize the subsidy pie is rapidly shrinking.
There is however, a section of the House proposal that would
injure consumers and has no place in a deregulatory bill. The dairy
lobby has proposed setting high price supports for milk and cheese as
well as imposing new consumer standards that would not improve nutrition
or taste but would add mightily to consumer costs. The dairy provisions
would add as much as 40 cents per gallon to the price of milk and cost
consumers perhaps an extra $2 billion a year. The bill also leaves huge
subsidies sugar growers and peanut farmers in place.
This Bill may not dismantle Federal subsidies overnight, but if
the dairy provisions are removed, it would constitute a good start and
should be approved by congress.
*Thanks to Jose Eli S daVeiga for mailing me the editorial*
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**** W. Tate Heuer (501)930-9903 ****
**** Agricultural Business and Economics Student PO Box 1305 ****
**** Arkansas State University State Univ., AR 72467 ****
**** Jonesboro, AR wheuer@quapaw.astate.edu****
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