Whatâs
Wrong Today:
The House
and the Senate have both passed farm bills in the last few weeks. The New
York Times reported that the 608-page farm bill the House passed
was the first since 1973 not to
include a food stamp program.
The
216-to-208 vote reversed an earlier House defeat
of a broader version of the bill last month, but it left the food stamp
program on the side of the road. That program normally makes up about 80%
percent of the farm bill. It costs nearly $75 billion a year, and has been a
constant target for House conservatives who say it has grown too large.
About 47
million Americans receive food stamps.
During a debate in
the House Agricultural Committee over food stamps and farm subsidies, reports Gail
Collins, Stephen Fincher’s (R-TN) hackles were raised when Juan Vargas
(D-CA) quoted the bible while asking why his Republican colleagues wanted to
cut $30 billion in aid to hungry children and the elderly over the next 10
years. After all:
you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for
me
Rep. Fincher reacted
badly to Vargasâ comments and told a Memphis audience, âMan, I really got bent
out of shape. ” He then gave Vargas a bible quote of his own:
one who is unwilling to work shall not eat
Perhaps
Rep. Fincher should do a little research first and find out how many of those
on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) ARE working or have
been recently working and how low their income is and how little additional income
they receive as SNAP assistance. Then look at the spike in assistance as a
direct result of the recession and the projections for future enrollment decline as the
slow recovery continues.
Those
data are freely provided
by the government he supposedly helps govern.
More from Fincher: (emphasis
by the Wrongologist)
role of citizens, Christians and humanity is to take care of each other, but not for Washington to steal money from
those in the country and give to others in the country.
Mr. Fincher might
want to consult another part of the Bible, the part that says that he who is
without sin shall cast the first stone: Fincher is a farmer AND the recipient of more than $3.5 million in
federal agricultural subsidies – wages of sin, as he might put it, from
a thieving government that “stole” from us to give to him.
From
Jonathan Chait in New
York Magazine: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
is a domestic spending program where House
Republicans are spending more than Obama wants to spend. Now, some House
Republicans would like to spend less on farm subsidies, but theyâre willing to
maintain the status quo. Theyâre not willing to maintain the status quo on food
stamps.
Does it get
any clearer than that?
In
the Fox News version of America, food stamp spending is not higher than in the
past because more people are poor and hungry after Wall Streetâs shenanigans
brought on the Great Recession. Rather, food stamp use is up because the Obama
European Socialist Machine is deliberately trying to build a bigger, stronger,
government-supporting coalition.
This is the sort of conspiracy-inspired
thinking that leads to the incredible position many conservatives have now
taken, as Chait says, that:
government should be handing out money to people because they run a farm, but
should not hand out money to people who happen to be poor
The Tea-Party fellow-traveler,
Heritage Action for America, has run ads saying the purpose of the farm bill
Republicans defeated last week was to “bankroll President Obama’s food-stamp
agenda.” Perhaps it is no longer surprising that conservative Republicans
have positioned themselves to Obama’s left only when domestic spending (like
farm subsidies) benefits their constituencies.
Says Chait:
existence of farm subsidies is insane, and the fact that a party that hates
government so much it engages in a continuous guerrilla war of shutdowns,
manufactured currency crises, and outright sabotage can’t eliminate it may be
the most telling indicator of the GOP’s venality…They only hate necessary
government spending. Totally unjustifiable spending is fine with them
Finally, the
House bill also included a provision by Rep. Dan Benishek, (R-MI) that requires
additional economic and scientific analyses before a sweeping 2010 law to
improve the food safety system goes into effect. Food safety advocates say the Benishek
provision effectively halts implementation of the law. Nice work Republicans!
In passing their
version of the bill, House Republicans made it easier for Republicans in red
states to vote for a big government program that benefits
mostly-Republican states and interest groups, knowing that they weren’t also
voting for something that pays out to the (mostly-Democratic) poor as well.
Conservatism has
become merely constituent services for
the most reliable parts of the Republican base. The Wrongologist is
uncertain about what kind of conservative opposition would best serve the common
good, but almost any alternative would be preferable to a Republican Party that
doesn’t seem to care about the common
good at all.
Splitting
the bills the way the House has does have some merit: It makes the corporate farmers
stand or sink on their own merits, and it makes politicians who support these
sorts of crony deals defend them on their merits.
And,
by the same token, we should let the food stamp bill stand or sink on its own
merits also.
Finally,
please
quit calling these agri-business corporations “farmers.” These businesses that
collect millions of our tax dollars in corporate welfare are not farmers.
They
are welfare queens.
The Lord hears the cry of the poor. Apparently, the Republican Party does not follow their Lord.
I wanted to add a comment about what sort of conservatism might serve the common good. To that I suggest the following: there are genuine conservative insights that would be helpful to the rest of society, but only if the insight was blended into the discussion and not used as a hammer to rebut.
think of the size of government – and here i don’t mean the federal govt, but govt in a state like NJ where we do have many folks laboring and being paid (and collecting retirement). if conservatives served to remind us that we can’t afford to grow each service at the same time (do have a form of geometric progression) even as benefit costs increase, that reminder could serve to help form better policy. Sadly, they end up dismissing government altogether, which leaves the field abandoned to those who don’t seem to worry at all about the size of the state budget.
We need a conservative who would remind us that (in NJ for example) we can’t simply increase income taxes, but who would be willing to trade his vote for just such an increase for a larger reform that might really work to reduce some services that we cannot afford.
Again, I could imagine that sort of conservatism, but i don’t see any real people doing that right now..
@Terry: It would be a very worthwhile exercise for both conservatives and liberals to structure their philosophies so that they supported the common good. It might just spill over into their politics, which rarely work for the common good, in NJ or in any other state, much less in the nation.