Washington Post Poses New Ag Policy
August 23, 1999
The current $7.4 billion emergency farm aid in the Senate agricultural appropriations bill, "is nothing more than a vast amount of sloppily given counter-cyclical aid by another name," says the Washington Post. What should happen, the editorial continues, is for Congress to forge a "moderate counter-cyclical policy" that combines the best of both worlds -- helping farmers who really need aid but not punishing consumers with sharply higher prices.
Instead of pursuing a "coherent farm policy" with the emergency legislation, Congress is going to spend the money "in the absence of one," says the Post editorial, published in Sunday's editions. The package is a "budget-buster," but that's secondary to the lack of sound agricultural policy.
At the time the freedom to farm bill was passed, The Post admitted giving the effort "some applause." But that legislation "went too far: it tossed out essential provisions along with excessive ones."
Freedom to farm "worked well enough in its first two years because prices were high and supports had yet to be reduced. Now, however, both prices and supports are down, and as the bidding wars between the parties to pass emergency legislation last year and this attest, not even the sponsors are prepared to stick by the 1996 legislation except in name."
The editorial continues, "Democrats urge a return to the counter-cyclical support system of the past, in which government payments go up when prices come down. Republicans resist in favor of the declining fixed payments in the 1996 act; to abandon those in the face of Democratic taunts would be to concede major error not just in agricultural policy but in rolling back government programs generally."
Providing $7 billion-plus in emergency aid could push total aid beyond $20 billion, more than a third of net cash farm income, the editorial notes. "Part of the problem is that the budget was artificially low, based as it had to be on the unrealistic expectation that the freedom to farm act would be adhered to."
The correct approach would be to stabilize price and supply "but without either raising price so high or involving the government so deeply in planting decisions as to cost U.S. producers sales abroad," says The Post. "It's a hard mix to find but not impossible."
Aid should be limited and not provide excessive subsidies to larger producers who don't need it, "a principal defect of the indiscriminate emergency spending." Rather than subsidizing production, thought might be given to increasing "the already considerable payments" being made for conservation, "thereby supporting farmers and the environment in the same stroke."
At some point, "a better policy has to emerge." That probably won't happen as long as members of Congress are competing for farm votes with taxpayers' money, the editorial says. "How many years in a row can the policymakers credibly cry emergency?"