Big Fail From Congress, Farm Bill Expires

With no new farm bill or extension, the programs that address rural and urban job creation, natural resource conservation, renewable energy, and improved production and access to healthy food are in big trouble.

October 1, 2012  |  

 

Photo Credit: Richard Thornton / Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

 

This article was published in collaboration with GlobalPossibilities.org.

As of today, our nation’s food and farm policy in the form of the 2008 Farm Bill has officially expired, with no workable replacement. There are many who see this as a better course of events than the passage of one of the new, admittedly imperfect, bills passed by the Senate and proposed in the House.  Others view congressional inaction as no big deal.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition begs to differ.

The farm bill is the nation’s major food and agricultural policy vehicle and is about much more than the big ticket items: food stamps, crop insurance, and commodity support.  The farm bill is also about conservation and environmental protection, rural economic and community development, food system reform and agricultural research.  Here’s what’s at stake:

With no new farm bill or extension, the programs that address rural and urban job creation, natural resource conservation, renewable energy, and improved production and access to healthy food are in big trouble. 

With the expiration of the farm bill, farmers will not be enrolling sensitive land in ecological restoration projects.  Training opportunities for the next generation of beginning farmers will dry up.  Microloans to the very small businesses that drive economic recovery in rural America will cease.  Emerging farmers markets in rural and urban food deserts will not have access to startup grants.  Organic farming researchers will not be able to compete for any dedicated research funds. 

Grants to encourage on-farm energy conservation, to fund fruit and vegetable research, to assist minority and tribal farmers, to rebuild local and regional food systems, to invest in emerging farmer and community owned food businesses with high consumer demand, and to transfer land to young farmers will also be put on hold.

These are casualties of Congressional inaction. Many commentators note that SNAP (food stamp) benefits and federal crop insurance subsidies, the two largest categories of farm bill spending, continue unabated, and that is true. But they’re missing the fact that these lesser-known programs have no funding starting on Monday.

These lesser-known farm bill programs have an outsized impact.  They drive innovation.  They create jobs.  They help solve environmental problems and boost energy independence.  They support the next generation of farmers and food entrepreneurs.

When the Senate passed a new five-year farm bill in June, it was difficult to imagine we would find ourselves in this situation. The House Agriculture Committee passed its version in July with bi-partisan support, but the House left town last week to go home and campaign without House Republican leaders ever bringing the new farm bill to the floor for amendment and approval.   Now Congress is tasked with passing a new farm bill during the short, busy lame duck session after the election.

Many House members are trying to reassure their constituents that because food stamps and crop insurance are taken care of, and because there is a little bit of time before commodity subsidy programs implode, it was all really no big deal to kick the can down the road.

Don’t try telling that to young farmers enrolling in training programs, to landowners trying to restore wetlands, or to researchers working to make a healthier and more sustainable food system.  They know they have been left in the lurch and they are looking to Congress to do the right thing and return after the election to get a new farm bill finished and signed into law.

As a nation, we need to keep food stamps working and we need a better, less costly and fairer farm safety net. But as important as those goals are, the farm bill is about much more than that.  Congressional dithering has put movement toward achieving a 21st century food and farm policy at risk.  The first programs to be shut down starting October 1 are precisely the ones that invest in a more equitable, sustainable, opportunity-generating farm and food system.  Despite the words of assurance to the contrary, this really is a big deal.

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Republicans Lie About ‘Support Our Troops’

By Walter Brasch 
The Public Record
Sep 28th, 2012

For a decade, Republicans have been screaming at Americans to “support our troops.”

But, they don’t really support our troops. Their constant chanting was originally code to support the Republican administration and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If the Republicans truly wanted to support the troops, they would have demanded—early in the wars—better armament and vehicles for the troops. Troops in Iraq had to “up-armor” their Humvees with their own ingenuity and money because Congress failed to appropriate enough protection.

The Republicans should have been outraged that after field medics performed extraordinary service to keep wounded from dying that the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center was negligent in providing health care. It took a Washington Post investigative series and actions by the Obama administration, not the Bush–Cheney administration, to straighten out that mess.

American civilians sent millions of packages of everything from soap to towels to shaving lotion for the troops because Congress didn’t provide many of the basic necessities.

And now the Republicans have blocked the Veterans Job Corps bill in the Senate. That bill would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 recent veterans by giving them priority in jobs as first responders. It would also have provided career advisers for the veterans. That bill would have helped not just veterans, but all Americans by strengthening fire, police, and first aid/paramedic assistance.

The vote in the senate was 58–40 to pass that bill. But, typical of Republican obstructionism, it failed. Although there was a clear majority, the bill failed because the Republicans used a technicality in Senate rules to force a higher standard–requiring 60 votes, not a simple majority, to pass the appropriation.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) led the opposition to the bill because he claimed it was reckless spending and he didn't want to spend any more of the taxpayer money on something apparently as outrageous as helping veterans.

However, the bill was fully funded solely by increasing tax collections from Medicare providers who were delinquent in paying taxes, and by requiring persons applying for passports to be current in paying taxes. Pay the delinquent taxes and be eligible for further Medicare payments and passports. Seemed simple enough.

But, Tom Coburn and the Republicans stuck to their mantra of no more spending, even at the expense of combat veterans. The veterans just want some assistance to get a job and not to be a burden on unemployment and welfare rolls.

One billion dollars. Fully funded. That’s what the bill called for. A billion dollars to help combat veterans. You know, the ones the Republicans sent into war in Iraq that we later learned was a war built upon lies.

Here’s another statistic. The cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has already cost Americans $2.3–$2.7 trillion, according to a Brown University analysis of war spending. That’s not even the total cost. The analysts believe the war will exceed $4 trillion by the time all costs, including $1 trillion in interest payments, are figured in. That total expense is more than 4,000 times more than the Democrats asked for to help returning veterans. And, that $4 trillion, generously pushed by a war-mongering Congress, never met even the barest of financial constraints the Republicans put upon a bill to help the veterans they sent into battle.

But, the real reason the Republicans killed the veterans job bill has nothing to do with their public claims they are trying to cut government costs or to reduce what they believe is Big Government. It has everything to do with petty politics. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Senate minority leader, had said “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He could have said the Republicans wanted to move the country forward, to help rebuild and improve the nation’s infrastructure, help those who became unemployed and then homeless because of the recession, establish stronger regulations to prevent fraud, improve medical care for all Americans, assure the success of small business, increase the security of Americans both at home and overseas, or to help combat veterans readjust to civilian life. But he didn’t say those were his party’s top priority. The top priority was to defeat President Obama.

And so the Republicans blocked more than 80 percent of all bills submitted in the Senate, including legislation to provide health care for 9/11 first responders, end tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs, stop price gouging at the gas pumps, require oil companies to use some of their profits to develop clean alternative energy, and end a $4 billion a year subsidy to the oil companies—the top 5 had more than $137 billion profit in 2011. (The Republicans did manage to introduce more than 250 bills about abortion, family relationships, marriage, and religion, but not one for jobs creation.)

Because of their selfish hubris, the Republicans not only created gridlock in Congress, they refused to allow a bill that had the support of a majority of the Senate to go forward to help combat veterans. After all, that might be seen as supporting the President and not doing the Republicans’ Number 1 job—to stop a second term.

Walter Brasch and his wife, Rosemary, were editors of The Oasis, a newspaper sponsored by the Red Cross for families of combat troops. Walter Brasch’s latest book is Before the First Snow: Stories from the Revolution.

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Ryan Claims that People will be "Bored" with Romney's Tax Plan

Just a few hours ago it has been declared the reason why GOP vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan will not discuss the math behind the Romney-Ryan tax plan. Since the Romney-Ryan tax plan is by Romney and Ryan, again, why will he not talk about it. In his own words, "people would be bored by it". Does that say allot about the Romney-Ryan tax plan by not saying anything at all? For me, it definitely does. Not that I'm really interested in knowing about the details in the Romney-Ryan tax plan, because just the fact that Romney's own right hand man doesn't want to discuss it speaks for itself. The facts are that Romney and Ryan believe in totally different tax plans. SO here you have a so called team, running for the White House and they have different stands on taxes.
With this said, if Ryan doesn't really support Romney's tax plan, and will just go along with it because Romney has nominated him as his vice-presidential candidate, then don't you think it is important to know what the vice-president's tax plan would be? We already know that Ryan wants to institute the voucher system when it comes to Medicare.

Everyone knows what President Obama has in mind when it comes to taxes. The President wants to raise taxes for the rich, and lower taxes for the middle class. The 1%'er's really do not need a tax break, but just the top 1% of people make the majority of income in this country, and are easily capable of paying more taxes. In a story in The New York Times, David Leonhardt pointed out that cutting specific tax deductions that Romney mentioned during a closed-door fundraiser -- including second-home mortgage interest deductions and limits on state and local property tax deductions for high-income earners -- would only raise a fraction of the revenue lost in across-the-board cuts. Romney has no major ideas that would bring back revenue lost in across-the-board cuts.

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