House reverses course, passes big-spending Farm Bill
However, the Coalition, while recognizing some gains made today, simply cannot celebrate today’s bill. As R Street‘s Andrew Moylan says, “First, this bill doesn’t repeal permanent law, it replaces it with the terrible commodity title in the 2013 bill.” In other words, as Politico points out, “Dating back to 1938 and 1949, these have been a ‘permanent law’ backstop of sorts for farm bills and source of political leverage for commodity groups. But they are largely impractical today and the new commodity title will now take their place as the new permanent law going forward.” [emphasis added]
Further, despite food stamp reform, the bill still represents huge agricultural spending that our country simply cannot afford — regardless of whether this type of big spending tends to be electorally easier for Republicans to support. As Politico’s David Rogers reports, “the full impact on different sectors was still being sorted out, and it appears sugar, cotton and rice stand to gain potentially.” And Moylan goes on to point out an even more troubling aspect the “reform” rhetoric ignores.
