[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 73 (Thursday, June 6, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E969-E970]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           FARM SECURITY ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ERNEST J. ISTOOK, JR.

                              of oklahoma

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 5, 2002

  Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I respectfully request that the attached 
article appearing in The Weekly Standard on May 27, 2002 regarding the 
recently passed and signed Farm Security Act conference report be 
included in the Congressional Record.

                [From the Weekly Standard, May 27, 2002]

                     The Pigs Return to the Trough


               Farm subsidies are back, bigger than ever

                            (By Fred Barnes)

       The White House veto of the farm bill was bold and defiant, 
     reflecting the strength and confidence of the president. The 
     bill not only costs too much and imposes too many government 
     controls, he said, but it's also filled with ``so much that 
     would be detrimental to farmers,'' their future would be put 
     in jeopardy. ``It would do harm to every agricultural region 
     of the country,'' the president said, causing large 
     surpluses. ``Thus it fails to meet the test of being good for 
     farmers and fair to all our people.'' Too bad this veto 
     message didn't come from President Bush last week when he 
     instead signed the bloated new farm bill. No, those words 
     were President Eisenhower's as he vetoed the Agricultural Act 
     of 1956.
       At the last moment, Bush considered a veto. His aides 
     checked with congressional Republicans to find out if the 
     bill's price tag might be as much as $20 billion more than 
     advertised. It's costly, but not that costly, the White House 
     was told. And even if it were, it was too late for a veto, 
     the president having signaled repeatedly that he'd sign the 
     measure. So, with misgivings, Bush went along. Three times, 
     he called the bill ``generous,'' and he conceded ``it's not a 
     perfect bill.'' His weak explanation for signing it was: 
     ``There's no such thing as a perfect bill.''
       There's a lot more wrong with the bill Bush signed than a 
     few imperfections. First, there's the money. Depending on 
     whose projections you use, it will raise farm spending by $73 
     billion to $82 billion over 10 years. The bill's total cost 
     is pegged at $457.8 billion, including $251.9 billion for 
     food stamps. What's worse is the attitude of Congress and the 
     White House toward the increased spending that the bill 
     reveals. A war is on and there's again a huge deficit, yet 
     Washington is back to its old ways, gorging on spending. The 
     era in which big government was over is over.
       The bill not only increases spending for most existing crop 
     subsidy programs, it

[[Page E970]]

     brings back old ones that had been killed and even creates 
     new ones. Remember the mohair subsidy, which became famous 
     because one of its recipients was newsman Sam Donaldson of 
     ABC? It was eliminated in the Freedom to Farm Act of 1996, 
     which was supposed to wean farmers off subsidies altogether, 
     but didn't. Well, the mohair subsidy is back, along with the 
     previously killed wool subsidy, thanks to the chairman (Larry 
     Combest) and ranking Democratic member (Charles Stenholm) of 
     the House Agricultural Committee, both from Texas. And thanks 
     to the efforts of Democratic senator Kent Conrad of North 
     Dakota, the honey subsidy has also risen from the dead.
       Is it crucial to America for these products to be federally 
     subsidized? Of course not. Yet what's alarming is how easily 
     these subsidies were revived. The standard wasn't whether 
     they are necessary. Obviously they aren't. It was whether the 
     subsidies could be slipped into the farm bill, one way or 
     another, while everyone is distracted by the war on 
     terrorism. This is the old way of doing business in 
     Washington: Feather your own nest--that is, your district or 
     state--with as much of the taxpayers' money as you can get 
     your hands on. This practice, dormant for a spell, is now 
     back in full flower.
       Republicans are almost as guilty as Democrats. For 
     instance, they used the farm bill to present a gift to Ben 
     Gilman, former chairman of the House International Relations 
     Committee, who's retiring. Onion growers in his upstate New 
     York district have been clamoring for federal aid for years, 
     and so has Gilman. The farm bill provides a subsidy. Gilman 
     was duly appreciative. ``This measure enables us to finally 
     deliver the needed $10 million in federal assistance to our 
     Orange County onion farmers, who have suffered year after 
     year,'' he said. Gilman is a capable congressman and a nice 
     man. But should the farm bill be a vehicle for gifts?
       The onion program is not the only new one. Conrad was the 
     key player in bringing about a subsidy for ``pulse'' crops--
     you know, chickpeas, lentils, and dry peas. A subsidy for 
     those is designed to encourage farmers to rotate their crops. 
     Crop rotation is a good agricultural practice. But hasn't it 
     been done for eons without a subsidy from Washington? Must 
     farmers really be prodded at taxpayers' expense?
       To no one's shock, the farm bill is blatantly political. As 
     Richard E. Cohen and Corine Hegland noted in the National 
     Journal, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle made sure 
     Democratic senators up for reelection this year were helped. 
     Max Cleland of Georgia got a bigger-than-ever peanut subsidy. 
     Tim Johnson of South Dakota wanted something called 
     ``country-of-origin'' labeling on products--and got it. Tom 
     Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, got a 
     big, fat farm bill to brag about back in Iowa.
       What about President Bush? He could have kept the farm bill 
     from becoming egregiously larded. Citing new economic 
     circumstances, he could have called for a little belt-
     tightening. It was back in spring 2001 when Congress 
     authorized the $73 billion increase in farm spending. At the 
     time, the budget surplus was $5 trillion and no annual 
     deficits were in sight. The economic slump changed things. By 
     late 2001, the surplus had shrunk dramatically and deficits 
     were foreseen. True, the White House complained about House 
     and Senate farm bills as they were being drafted, saying they 
     cost too much and didn't meet the White House's free-market 
     standards. But Bush could have insisted Congress trim the $73 
     billion hike and not add programs.
       Against a good bit of evidence, Bush and his aides assert 
     the Freedom to Farm bill with its market-oriented approach 
     has not been reversed by the new farm bill. At last week's 
     signing ceremony, Bush said supplemental farm bills won't 
     have to be enacted every year, as was the case after 1996. 
     The new bill, he said, ``is generous enough to eliminate the 
     need for supplemental support later this year and in the 
     future.'' We'll see. The question is whether farmers and 
     their allies in Washington have merely been whetted. The 
     answer, more likely than not, is whetted.

     

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