Nothing says "rugged self-reliance" like $20 billion in annual subsidies
I snickered when I
read this:
Republicans recognize they may need to look elsewhere to achieve consensus after President Obama “excoriated us” for a proposal to privatize Medicare.
That search could start, Cantor said, with a list of GOP proposals that would save $715 billion over the next decade by ending payments to wealthy farmers, limiting lawsuits against doctors, and expanding government auctions of broadcast spectrum to telecommunications companies, among other items.
Not sure what tort reform for doctors has to do with the budget deficit, and I doubt anyone outside of the telcos care about expanding government auctions of broadcast spectrum.
But ending payments to wealthy farmers? That one will give us bipartisanship, indeed, but not the kind of we're used to. It won't be Democrat versus Republican, but farm state versus the rest of America.
Remember, for Republicans, government spending is the Worst Thing Evah! That is, unless it's
government payouts to constituent farmers.
"That was fun. I enjoyed that," said [Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck] Grassley after an aggressive exchange about the propriety of farm program subsidies with Bill Davison, who lives at rural Eldridge.
Davison said farmers in Scott County received $170 million in subsidies from 1995-2009. "I can't believe we can't ask farmers to do more on their own," he said.
"You'e not going to like my answer," Grassley said, explaining that the subsidies are needed for national security, to provide a steady supply of food, and for social cohesion. "You're only nine meals away from a revolution," he said.
But wait, what's this?
Grassley is listed as directly receiving a total of $263,635 in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009.
Aha! And he ain't the only one. Republicans Orrin Hatch (UT) and Richard Lugar (IN) have also received federal farm subsidies (along with Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado). In the House, 23 congresscritters -- 17 of them Republicans -- are receiving farm subsidies.
Other reasons Republican "budget hawks" line up in support of farm subsidies:
1. Subsidies go to the richest. Ten percent of "farmers" collect 74 percent of all agricultural subsidies. I put farmer in square quotes, because in reality those subsidies are going to major agricultural conglomerates. And those top 10 percent recipients averaged subsidies of nearly $30,000, while the bottom 80 percent averaged $572.
2. Iowa is the first presidential contest. Any Republican with presidential ambitions has to stay on the right side of the issue, lest he or she suffer in the nation's first presidential contest. Witness Haley Barbour, when he was flirting with a presidential run:
“Some of them are very important,” Barbour told TheDC when asked if he supported taxpayer subsidies for farmers. “What we want to have in the United States is abundant food at a responsibly low price. To do that, we have to have an appropriately large supply of agricultural products. When sales volumes are good, prices are reasonable, there shouldn’t be any farm subsidies. But for natural reasons, nature, or what other countries are doing in terms of how they’re handling their markets, sometimes it is appropriate to have farm subsidies.”
So bailouts for products made in states with little political import, like Michigan and its auto industry, suck. But Iowa? Very, very important to funnel $20 billion a year to rich farmers on the off-chance that they may need a bailout someday.
3. Republicans disproportionately represent rural congressional districts and states. It's no secret that House Democrats are clustered around major cities and suburbs, while Republicans mostly represent exurbs and rural areas. And while those rural voters love to talk about how their tax dollars are being "wasted" on big city welfare programs, the reality is actually the opposite (whether at the federal level, or at the state level: GA (PDF), IN, KY (PDF), NV, Wa, etc). And Republicans are more than happy to maintain that fiction.
To be clear, plenty of Democrats will fight to defend these indefensible subsidies. But most of those will be your rural Blue Dog-style Democrat -- happy to rail against spending and deficits to prove their fiscal bona fides, yet rabidly in favor of wasting taxpayer dollars on huge agribusiness conglomerates.
Thus new partisan battle lines will be drawn. On one side, we'll have those seeking ways for government to become leaner and more efficient. On the other, we'll have a motley assortment of hypocrites.