Farm bill is chock-full of agribusiness pork

Apparently, Congress has not received the message from the voters. It is going to be “pork’ on steroids. Amazing that these same people will present themselves for re-election in 2014. For the House, all of them. So while they wail about the massive over spending that is a threat to the survival of our nation, the debt we are burdening the next generations that will be impossible to repay, it’s spend, spend, spend. So they roll food stamps into the farmers pork bill. Better to see you my dear. And we do. A nice piece over at Hot Air that let’s us know what is going down while the thieves in chief spy on our behaviors.

This behemoth and pork-filled bill is going to be directing a full decade’s worth of federal policy, but it’s going to fly on through under the radar to the tune of a trillion dollars paying for all kinds of miscellaneous programs, like expanding broadband in rural communities and cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay; it’s nothing short of a raging party funded by the taxpayer’s dime, and everybody’s invited!

The Heritage Foundation points out, this is all a lot of hemming and hawing over what is a much more expensive bill than the last go-around, plain and simple:

As the WSJ points out, peanut, cotton, and sticky-rice farmers are going to be some of the big winners of the price guarantees in the bill:

The federal subsidy in the House bill guarantees farmers of Japonica Rice that if market prices drop below 115% of the average price of all types of rice, they will get a government payment to make up the difference. …

The move shines a light on guarantees against drops in commodity prices that are in some ways replacing the much-maligned direct payments to farmers Congress is seeking to end. Subsidies for products such as corn, wheat and cotton cost taxpayers about $5 billion a year. Rice growers have received a total of more than $2.6 billion in subsidies since 1995, according to the Environmental Working Group…

The sticky-rice provision won strong support from, among others, two Northern California lawmakers from neighboring districts, according to congressional aides and people working with the rice industry: Freshman Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa, a fourth-generation Japonica Rice farmer who sits on the House agriculture committee; and Democratic Rep. John Garamendi, a rancher and pear farmer.

Filed under: Government Tagged: agribusiness, Agriculture, current-events, Economy, environment, Farm Bill, Farm Subsidies, Food Stamps, Politics