Combests Thoughts On Ag Policy
In a recent article, the former Chairman of the House Ag Committee, Larry Combest took on a failed attempt in the U.S. Senate to avoid hard budget decisions, by circumventing the Ag Committees and eliminating nearly any resemblance of a farm safety net in the current farm bill. While the Senate attempt failed, it’s likely to resurface.
The summery of the former chairman’s thoughts below remain a relevant reminder of the fight ahead for a five year farm bill.
Out of roughly $3.8 trillion in annual government spending, the plan could identify only $55 billion in cuts over 10 years and all $55 billion would come at the expense of our national defense and America’s farmers and ranchers.
The plan is also unbalanced and unfair. It does not simply single out the farm bill as one of only two places in the entire federal budget that can be cut, but it actually goes a step further to single out one section of the farm bill for elimination. Under the plan, 100 percent of the cuts would come at the expense of policies comprising just 6 percent of farm bill funding.
Specifically, the plan would terminate the direct payment. But that is not the main problem. Last year’s farm bills would have done the same. The problem is how.
By eliminating fully one-half of the funding available to write a new farm safety net in a five-year farm bill, the plan makes the development and successful passage of that farm bill a bigger challenge. First, there would not be adequate resources to provide a meaningful safety net for farmers. Second, an impetus behind passage of a farm bill has been to achieve the savings and reforms the bill can offer.
What’s more, if direct payments are terminated as provided under this plan, every farmer in the country will be left with no effective policy should the farm economy collapse.
If Washington cares one iota about farmers and ranchers and rural America it will not let this happen.
Instead, lawmakers should instruct the House and Senate Agriculture Committees to move bipartisan farm bill legislation forward that achieves a fair and equitable amount of savings to help turn off sequestration and to assist in reaching the deficit reduction goals set forth by Simpson-Bowles. Under that scenario, the direct payment would still be repealed. Billions of dollars would still be saved and reforms would be implemented.
These days the debate over farm policy has become incredibly one-sided. Major newspapers uncritically pick up and print every claim against it but rarely if ever present the other side. For their part, full time critics have demonstrated that they will say and do pretty much anything to tear down a policy that they viscerally dislike. Both are free to ignore facts in front of their noses and pretend that farmers and ranchers don’t face unique weather and market volatility.
Washington cannot ignore the fact that farmers would go uninsured without federal crop insurance and that our trading partners do an awful lot to manipulate the world market that affects what an American farmer gets paid. It cannot be ignored that farm policy has been under budget for over a decade now and has already been singled out several times for cuts. Nor can agriculture’s contributions to the economy and balance of trade, to say nothing of its societal importance, be overlooked.
The bottom line is, this country’s farmers and ranchers need a farm bill. At long last, Washington should get it done. Passing a farm bill will not be easy. It has never been.
For agriculture’s part, farmers and ranchers can help by unifying on substance and strategy. Ongoing divisions will work against agriculture not only on this farm bill but may well have repercussions on other policies important to crop and livestock producers down the road.