March: BiodefenseMeaningful farm bill reform effort fails yet again

Published 28 March 2008

Current law allows subsidies to farmers with annual adjusted gross income of as much as $2.5 million; the administration and many legislators wanted to to end payments to producers with adjusted gross incomes greater than $200,000; agribusiness industry plowed more than $80 million into lobbying last year — and defeated the measure

They say that there is nothing as permanent as a temporary subsidy given by the U.S. government to this or that sector. In evidence: U.S. farm subsidies. Farm subsidies have their roots in the Great Depression, when about a quarter of the U.S. population lived on farms and endured extraordinary economic hardship. As first conceived in the 1930s, the bill was designed to be a temporary boost to farm income.

Today, farmers make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, and agriculture production is dominated by large, industrial farms that have annual sales of $1 million or more. In 2006 average farm household income was $77,654, or about 17 percent more than average U.S. household income, according to the Department of Agriculture (USDA). Average farm household income is expected to be about $90,000 this year. Current law allows subsidies to farmers with annual adjusted gross income of as much as $2.5 million.

In January 2007, as Democrats took over Congress, the Bush administration believed it had enough support in Congress to begins and introduce some changes to the farm subsidies regime. Among other things, Bush proposed to end payments to producers with adjusted gross incomes greater than $200,000, instead of the $2.5 million under current law. As the Wall Street Journal’s Lauren Etter and Greg Hitt write, though, reformers underestimated yet again the strength of the farm lobby: The agribusiness industry plowed more than $80 million into lobbying last year, according to the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks spending on lobbying. Much of that was focused on the farm bill. The result was predictable: “We got rolled,” says Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who worked closely with Representative Ron Kind (D-Wisconsin) to reform the farm bill. “The agriculture community circled the wagons.” Chuck Connor, deputy agriculture secretary and the Bush administration’s lead farm-bill negotiator, agreed: “If you’re providing benefits to the wealthiest Americans, that’s not a safety net,” said. “We felt that was fundamentally wrong.”

Etter’s and Hitt’s discussion of the farm bill debate offers a good example of how and to what extent sectors in the economy will fight to keep subsidies to which they have become accustomed.