Tag Archives: farm bill
Bipartisan Farm Bill
Congress got something done last week. It passed a bipartisan, 10 year, trillion dollar farm bill.
The farm bill includes insurance against “adverse price movements”. Isn’t that what the credit default swaps were supposed to do for subprime loans before the great recession?
Bipartisanship on Farm Bill
It’s all too much for the editors of National Review who note that:
Many crop prices are near all-time highs, and if they drop as expected, new loss-protection programs could — likely will — cost billions more than the CBO calculates.
In an even rarer case of bipartisanship the Washington Post editorial board agrees:
Supposedly necessary to secure the nation’s food supply at a time of record farm income and epidemic obesity, this federal largess flows almost regardless of how much money its recipients already have.
The Post then calls on President Obama to use his pen to veto the bill.
More Bipartisan Farm Bill Update:
Bloomberg reports the Senate threw out a requirement that members of Congress would have to publicly report if they receive federally subsidized crop insurance.
Farm Bill
Congress is working on a new farm bill. Fifteen lawmakers receive direct payments from the Agriculture Department according to Bloomberg. Heritage’s The Foundry is happy to show us who else gets farm aid here.
Drought
President Obama was in Iowa trying to give tax money to the wealthy. He wants us t0 ” ‘put politics aside’ and give farmers their money”. Ten percent of farmers get 74% of all farm subsidies. Forty percent of the U.S. corn crop is used to make federally mandated ethanol.
