Breakdown of the Farm Bill Spending - Where Does the Money Go?

You would think that in the Farm Bill, the bulk of the moeny would go to, well, farms. Instead, a bulk of the money goes to domestic nutrition programs. What exactly is a “domestic nutrition program?”

Food stamps.

• Food stamps and other domestic nutrition programs such as emergency food assistance: just over 66 percent, about $200 billion.
• Subsidies for rice, cotton, corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops: 14 percent, around $43 billion.
• Conservation programs to set aside or protect environmentally sensitive farmland: 9 percent, about $27 billion.
• Crop insurance to help farmers protect against losses: 8 percent, about $23 billion.
• Foreign food aid would make up less than one percent of the bill, costing less than $200 million. The bulk of international food assistance is in annual appropriations bills.

“Conservation programs to set aside or protect environmentally sensitive farmland” could also be read as: “money given to farmers for not growing anything on this land: about $27 billion.”

This farm bill is a pork laden monstrosity that should be not only be vetoed, but its supporters should be taken out behind the woodshed and beaten. And that goes for you too Sam Graves. Look at this garbage:

At an estimated cost of at least $285 billion over 10 years, this will be the most expensive and regressive farm bill ever. Given how Congress uses budget gimmicks these days to hide the real costs of many of the bills it approves, that $285 billion figure is almost certainly too low. If there was a truth-in-spending law with real teeth in it, this Congress would have been hauled to the pokey long ago.

On Tuesday, four reformist House members wrote a letter explaining that the devil is in the details of the farm bill.

Democrats Ron Kind of Wisconsin and Jim Cooper of Tennessee joined Republicans Jeff Flake of Arizona and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin in pointing out that the cap on direct payments to landowners — which are based on total acreage rather than land actually used to grow real food — would rise from $40,000 to $50,000 per person. And remember those infamous subsidies that have gone to “farmers” like former ABC newsman Sam Donaldson, CNN founder Ted Turner and banker David Rockefeller? The farm bill allows subsidies for people making as much as $950,000 annually, and nearly $2 million for married couples.

This socialist program has been around since the 20s. I covered it in a five part series last year. It was well received then and, considering the above, could stand a review.

• How We Got to $286 Billion in Corporate Welfare: A Short History of Farm Subsidies
• Subsidizing the Consolidation of the Family Farm: How Farm Subsidies Are Nothing More Than Corporate Welfare
• Scams, Scandals and Downright Stupidity: The Fraud, Waste and Abuse of the Federal Farm Subsidy Program
• America’s Farm Subsidies and the World Economy
• What Happens If We Abolish Farm Subsidies?