After handing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris everything they wanted in terms of budget proposals over the past two years, the duplicitous Republican-controlled House is still not done with expanding inflationary spending. Currently, more than half of the House Republican Conference letter He urged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and other House Republican leaders to pass a national farm bill during the upcoming lame duck session.
Despite passing the Biden-Harris Continuing Resolution and railing against inflation on the campaign trail, Republicans appear unable to control their appetite for the very policies that promote inflation, especially in the food industry.
We're hoping for a win within three weeks from now, so we'd better start planning how this time will be different.
The $1.5 trillion Agriculture and Food Stamp Reauthorization Act is a perfect example of WWE-style fake political warfare between the two parties. Not only have Republicans failed to stem staggering levels of inflationary spending every time they have had a chance to reform, cut, or delegate policy to the states, but every time they have control of Congress, they have The fiscal deficit is expanding beyond existing standards. They bickered about the rate of increase and some minutiae of the plan, pretending they were fighting over 1% of the issue, while only giving the Democrats 95% of what they wanted.
The reauthorization primarily consists of food stamps and other food assistance programs, amounting to about $1.2 trillion over five years. For the remaining portion of agriculture, both parties agreed to continue the Nanny National Farm Plan, which bankrupts the country, distorts agricultural and land-use markets, creates monopolies for the benefit of the wealthy, and nationalizes food production. It seems like it is.
At a House Agriculture Committee hearing earlier this year, the two parties fought fiercely over the rate of increase in food stamps, but ultimately agreed to keep the rate at double the 2008 level. Neither side proposed any changes to the program. To states where anti-dependence initiatives like “'' are taking place.hope florida” caused 27,500 people to leave the program.
As a result, HR 8467, the Agriculture, Food, and National Security Act of 2024, passed the committee on May 23 by a vote of 31-21. Four Democrats joined all Republicans in supporting the bill.
of Monster on page 954The system, which combines urban food stamp interests with large-scale agricultural interests, is intended to raise overall prices and expand federal control over state programs. The bill formalizes an illegal expansion of Biden's “Thrifty Food Plan” and locks in annual cost-of-living increases for three years. Ironically, this was seen as a victory for conservatives, as Democrats had pushed for further expansion of the program during the amendment process.
Republicans secured “savings” by blocking further expansion of food stamps, but only diverted $40 billion to farm subsidies. These subsidies fuel venture socialism in its worst form, distorting agricultural decisions, enriching the wealthiest landowners (often foreigners), and driving up land prices. Federal crop insurance is having the same effect on agriculture as Obamacare had on health care, driving up costs, accelerating consolidation, and crowding out independent farmers, just as it did for independent physicians. There is. Only 10% of farmers receive 56% of subsidy.
a 2017 Congressional Research Service Report It noted that 94 percent of farm subsidies under Title I go to just six items, 46 percent of which go to corn. Corn already benefits from ethanol regulations, which require fuel producers to blend ethanol into the nation's gasoline supply. Although these six items receive 94% of subsidies, they account for only 27% of total agricultural output. The report suggests that this difference “deserves further investigation into how the program works across program crops.”
Furthermore, 54% of all cultivated land is leased rather than owned. According to the USDAwhich has the highest concentration of leased land for the most heavily subsidized crops. Therefore, this is a landlord subsidy bill rather than a farmer subsidy bill.
Government intervention in agriculture, like health care, picks winners and losers. Under these farm bills, the winners would be to grow large-acre crops like corn, cotton, and soybeans, or Southern Republicans would fight for lower-acre crops like peanuts and rice. If the government were not involved in insurance, the private sector would administer crop insurance, just as it does auto and homeowners insurance. Instead, crop insurance, like health insurance, has fallen into a market-distorting mess.
Like the coronavirus, food has become a new area of government overreach. Governments want to take over agriculture and steer people towards unhealthy and expensive food, just as they did in medicine. These federal farm programs shift the playing field away from local farmers and further toward corporate farm lobbyists. Biden plans to require all cows to have electronic IDs, but there's nothing in the bill to prevent that scary rule.
In the name of “conservation,” governments spend $14 billion to pay farmers to keep their land fallow. In 2018, Donald Trump vowed to cut back on these programs that allow wealthy corporations to buy land and keep it idle. But the last farm bill, passed under a tripartite Republican agreement, fully funded and expanded these programs. As a result, wealthy landowners benefit and land prices continue to soar, much like a subsidized asset bubble. The House Republican version omits some of the bullshit rhetoric about climate change, but retains in its entirety the absurd conservation programs that undermine the goal of food self-sufficiency.
Sixteen months after Kevin McCarthy's debt ceiling hike (which Mike Johnson supported), our debt has grown by $4.3 trillion, almost as fast as the year of lockdown itself. . If we continue to push through these huge farm bills without any meaningful institutional reform, or at least shifting these programs to states that can't print debt, how exactly do we address inflation, especially food? Can it be cured?
We're hoping for a win within three weeks from now, so we'd better start planning how this time will be different.
