Washington celebrates finally getting a farm bill passed,
corporate agribusiness, the insurance industry, and the Koch brothers
are celebrating a poisoned farm bill that adds to the Kochs…
On Tuesday the Senate passed the “bipartisan” bicameral farm bill
that languished for two years because Democrats and repugicans were
locked in a heated debate on how much food to take away from poor
people, and believe it or not there were progressives claiming the farm
bill was a “
win for us.” However, while some are congratulating Congress for “
only” robbing
$8.7 billion
from the food stamp program, and Washington celebrates finally getting a
farm bill passed, corporate agribusiness, the insurance industry, and
the Koch brothers are celebrating a poisoned farm bill that adds to the
Kochs fortune and decimates part of the Clean Water Act. If any American
other than the Kochs, Americans for Prosperity, and corporate
agribusiness is celebrating the farm bill, they obviously are unaware of
what the bill entails and why it sailed through both houses of Congress
with hardly a whimper from conservatives lusting for deeper food stamp
cuts.
Both Democrats and repugicans boasted the repeal of $4.5 billion in
annual direct cash payments to farmers (subsidies) that Senator Debbie
Stabenow said “
ends outdated and unnecessary subsidies.” House Agriculture Committee chairman Frank Lucas (r-OK) highlighted the savings by repealing the direct payments and
said “
don’t underestimate the magnitude of the reforms;”
reforms that surreptitiously deposited direct payment savings right
back to corporate agribusiness by expanding crop insurance subsidies.
The farm bill actually doles out the same amount of taxpayer money to
farmers, mostly wealthy ones, as the old direct payment program. The new
bill’s gift to corporate agriculture is the shift from direct payments
to crop insurance that ensures them their free taxpayer money will be
distributed in a hidden manner making it difficult to repeal later.
Supporters of the government crop insurance program claim it only
pays farmers if they experience losses, but because the federally
subsidized crop insurance program already pays nearly two-thirds of
farmers’ premiums and insurance claims, it guarantees they will get more
revenue whether a crop fails or prices drop below a certain level. The
new farm bill
expands
the program at a cost to taxpayers of $7 billion more than the old
bill. Last year farmers received $16 billion in crop insurance payments
that were paid by the federal government, not an insurance company,
regardless that net agriculture income
increased
by 15 percent. The biggest beneficiaries of crop insurance payouts are
corporate agribusiness because there are no limits to premium support
that means the biggest and richest businesses reap the most benefits. A
critic of crop insurance, the
Environmental Working Group,
estimated that 10,000 policy holders receive over $100,000 each in crop
insurance subsidies annually, and under the law the names of individual
businesses getting support
are secret so members of Congress receiving subsidies will not be disclosed to the public.
The public is also likely unaware that private insurance companies administering the program
received
$1.3 billion for administrative expenses in 2011 despite the fact that
the crop insurance program is paid for by the government. Crop insurance
is extremely
lucrative for companies administering the program who earn, on average, a 30% return and
recorded
$10 billion in profits over the past decade. It is so profitable for
insurance companies that insurers regularly cover high-risks where
farmers plant in low-yield areas because they will get rewarded either
way. Crop insurance also included “Price Loss Coverage” where farmers
receive taxpayer payments if prices for corn, soybeans, or 12 other
crops fall below a certain level. The new farm bill raises that floor
price in ways that guarantee there will always be payouts for some crops
making Price Loss Coverage duplicative as well as forces taxpayers to
guarantee revenue for private businesses.
One of the private businesses guaranteed more revenue is the Koch
brothers whose Americans for Prosperity belief-tank spent no small
amount of money advertising and
demanding food stamp cuts it claimed was a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars. The Kochs asserted the farm bill serves “
special interests and powerful corporations”
over taxpayers to garner opposition to it unless it included huge cuts
to food stamps. Although the food stamp cuts were not as barbaric as the
Kochs wanted, the final version contained two very special gifts for
the Koch brothers’ special interests and their powerful corporations.
repugicans
preserved $881 million in “
mandatory”
spending for biomass energy that Koch Industries’ subsidiary,
Georgia-Pacific, uses to collect a very significant amount of
taxpayer-funded government subsidies. The Koch company applied for and
collected biomass crop assistance and
reports
from lobbyists revealed that Koch Industries pressured repugicans to
preserve the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) program. Records
also show the executive director for Koch Industries asked the
Department of Agriculture to
expand the BCAP program to include forestry eligibility that was included in the bill to benefit the Koch brothers.
The new bill also includes a measure that guarantees runoff of
pesticides and other chemicals from forestry operations, including
mills,
cannot be regulated under the Clean Water Act as industrial pollution. An amendment included for the Koch brothers defines the “
EPA’s treatment of forestry operations as non-point sources of pollution under the Clean Water Act.”
The environmental group Wild Oregon asserted that prohibiting the EPA
from classifying pesticides and chemicals as pollution was the result of
an effort to overturn “
a recent court ruling that pollution originating from active logging roads be treated similarly to other industrial activities.” The group says the amendment poses “
a
serious risk to countless rivers and streams in Oregon that have been
damaged by poor logging and road building practices as well as pesticide
and chemical runoff.” Koch industries got help from timber
companies and energy corporations to expand the biomass energy program,
and their company Georgia-Pacific got
lobbying assistance for the amendment banning the EPA from regulating pesticides and industrial chemicals used in the lumber industry.
The repugicans stepped up and complied with the Koch brothers’ demand to
poison the water and reap free taxpayer money for biomass while they
obeyed the Kochs’ Americans for Prosperity and cut funding for food
stamps that some on the left claimed was “
a victory for our side” because it “only” cut $8.7 billion from the SNAP program affecting 15 blue states
exclusively. It is a sad prospect indeed when any non-teabagger or repugican regards any food stamp cuts as a “victory,” but that is what
happens when cuts are relative to what repugicans could have slashed
from food assistance for the poor.
The farm bill is due to hit President Obama’s desk on Friday and it did not, as repugicans and some Democrats claim, “
reform”
the system of handing free taxpayer money to corporate agribusinesses
when it really locks that welfare in place through misdirection. It was
easy for critics of agricultural subsidies to denounce farmers getting
paid directly for not planting their fields, but few will decry
excessively generous insurance payouts; particularly when it is done in
secret like the new farm bill demands. Republicans learned how to hide
payouts during the shrub's Iraq war debacle, and keeping the focus on “
cutting wasteful food stamp funding”
from underserving poor people served its purpose in distracting the
public and pundits from the farm bill’s generous gifts to undeserving
corporate agribusinesses and Koch Industries. The real giveaway that the
farm bill is poison was how easily it passed the House where repugicans had demanded $40 billion in cuts to food stamps, but settled
for less because of the billions that will go to the Kochs’ and the
toxic chemicals that will go into the water supply.
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