FEEDING THE GREEDY, STARVING THE NEEDY
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX

With the federal government operating on little more than fumes, and with our budget deficit ballooning, a group of “tax and spend” Republicans pushed through a bill that increases farm subsidies by about $50 billion over the next decade. The legislation guarantees a more stable income for grain and cotton growers by raising subsidies for them. It also provides new subsidies for growers of peanuts, lentils, and dry peas. When President Bush signed the legislation last week, he called farming our nation’s “first industry”. The farm bill, though, was the first payoff in an already highly charged midterm election year, providing special benefits to the wealthiest wheat, corn, cotton and rice growers in 10 central and southern states.

Many of us have visions of small family farms when we think of farming, and those who pushed the farm bill through did little to discourage the notion that these subsidies are going to homespun farmers in the heartlands of America. In fact, nearly 80 percent of federal farm subsidies go to corporate farmers who hardly need them. This farm bill is public assistance at its worst, but few call it for what it is – welfare for wealthy farmers.

The only good thing about the farm bill is the fact that it includes the Food Stamp Reauthorization Act of 2002, providing a nutrition safety net for working poor families. But House Republicans are trying to take away some of what the Farm Bill provided by providing “flexibility” to states in the ways they administer the food stamp program. The Welfare Reauthorization Act, which passed the House on a largely party-line vote last week, contains provisions to allow five states to block grant the Food Stamp program at any time during the 2003-2007 period. Block grant states would be required to provide some food assistance, but they could distribute food stamps in any way they wanted to, could cut benefits to any group, including legal immigrants, and impose limits on the among of time people could receive food stamps. The problem with block grants is that they provide states with a fixed sum of money, but the need for food stamps varies with economic conditions. In the name of flexibility, block grant states are gambling on economic stability and putting the nutrition status of its most needy residents up as collateral.

This “superwaiver” exemption contained in the bill that had 229 votes for it and 129 votes against would allow states to get around federal rules in a variety of low-income programs like food stamps, childcare, and TANF. States who apply for waivers would be allowed to move money from one program to another, which defeats the purpose of setting aside funds specifically for nutrition. Both block grants and “superwaivers” undermine the food stamp program and potentially make it more difficult for poor people, especially the working poor, to feed their families while they subsist on low-wage jobs.

It is ironic that debate on TANF (temporary aid for needy families) reauthorization follows the swift approval of a different kind of TANF program, temporary aid for needy farmers. The President could not have been more delighted to provide public assistance to his corporate friends; he takes a more parsimonious view toward public assistance when poor families are to be the beneficiaries of federal aid. Instead of boosting the funds to go to poor families, the President proposes increasing work requirements (thereby decreasing training opportunities), spending millions to promote marriage and abstinence, but little more to support training and education. The legislation that President bush proposes would eliminate an aspect of current law that allows people to count vocational education as work. While farmers are subsidized to protect them from market fluctuations in the price of their crops, there are no employment subsidies available for people at the bottom. Indeed, while the farming wage is rising, thanks to federal subsidies, the federal minimum wage has not increased since 1996!

Why treat farmers with kid gloves, while knocking poor folks around with boxing gloves? The agriculture lobby is bettering financed and more powerful than the poor folks lobby. Members of Congress get bragging rights when they limit benefits for welfare recipients, a group of people that it is easy to vilify. They also get bragging rights for helping farmers, mainly because many of us retain an outmoded notion of struggling family farmers. The real deal is the farm bill was a giveaway to corporate farming interests that had only the redeeming value of food stamp reauthorization to save it. Now Congress is poised to take that small benefit away in its wrangling about welfare reform: the barely Democratic-controlled Senate will vote on the House legislation in the not so distant future. At President Bush’s urging, they are feeding the greedy, starving the needy, and getting away with it because poor folks don’t have the money to fund a lobby to protect them.