Update to my Farm Bill Update
I want to clarify my previous post on this issue: McCain does NOT have it right here. While he and Bush speak about irresponsible spending and subsidies, their main road to balancing the budget would be to cut spending in nutrition programs, environmental programs, and other noble efforts to improve this bill.
A recent article in the Nation talks about how Obama Gets the Farm Bill Right:
The man McCain is likely to face in the November election, Democrat Barack Obama, embraced a different set of priorities.
“By opposing the bill, President Bush and John McCain are saying no to America’s farmers and ranchers, no to energy independence, no to the environment, and no to millions of hungry people,” argued Obama.
“The bill places greater resources into renewable energy and conservation. And, during this time of rising food prices, the farm bill provides an additional $10 billion for critical nutrition programs. I am also pleased that the bill includes my proposal to help thousands of African-American farmers get their discrimination claims reviewed under the Pigford settlement,” said Obama.
… [more] …
But it is Obama — not McCain, and certainly not Bush — who has approached the farm bill fight with the humane, honest and realistic view that Americans have right to expect from a president.
“This bill is far from perfect,” the senator from Illinois admits. “I believe in tighter payment limits and a ban on packer ownership of livestock. As president, I will continue to fight for the interests of America’s family farmers and ranchers and ensure that assistance is geared towards those producers who truly need them, instead of large agribusinesses. But with so much at stake, we cannot make the perfect the enemy of the good.”
I think that Obama has a point — the good is not the enemy of the best. But he should have made a bigger statement about this and made this an issue from the beginning. I agree with his vision of what our Farm Bill should look like (eventually), and I think that McCain’s final vision is lacking, but Obama has done nothing courageous here. McCain has. Obama wants stuff for his people. McCain doesn’t think that those people should be getting money (more of a free market approach). No surprise there on either side.
Clearly if Obama’s going to oppose anything he would want to get the subsidies under control, but he has done nothing to make this happen. He’s come out with a pretty mediocre statement justifying the agribusiness welfare, but he has done nothing to indicate that he’ll actually end the excessive subsidies. He says that he will ‘continue to fight for the interests of America’s family farmers,’ but the best thing we can do for these farmers is to overhaul American agriculture and end big-business subsidies that make it nearly impossible for smaller farmers to compete. Obama is practicing politics as usual: bland statements, and allowing big business to get away with pretty much whatever they want, as long as the minorities/small farmers/environmental interests are represented.
McCain, however, has done something that takes more political courage. He has spoken out against the entire bill as irresponsible, even though some of his supporters in agribusiness will not benefit from his vision. If there’s one place where we need ‘hope’ and ‘change’ and to end ‘politics as usual,’ it’s in American farm policy, and Obama has been uncharacteristically blah on this issue.
I want to make it clear (if I haven’t already) that McCain’s farm bill wouldn’t look that great either. It would end assistance to new/smaller farmers, and would stop nutrition and environmental programs. But I think the biggest priority should be to end the subsidies. Even if the small farmers don’t benefit in the short term, the market will adjust over time and then everyone will be on a more even playing field where sustainability is rewarded/promoted in the government, the fields, and the marketplace and monoculture/overproduction is not.
