[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9586]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             THE FARRM BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, the FARRM Bill is now before us. It's a 
measure originating in the House of Representatives, whose majority was 
elected on a clear mandate to stop wasting money. Yet all this bill 
does is continue to waste money.
  Yes, it tightens up a little on automatic eligibility for food 
stamps, and that's a good thing. Yet this modest reform is a poor 
substitute for the complete overhaul that is desperately needed.
  The food stamp program, now called SNAP, was originally intended to 
provide basic commodities to the truly needy. Yet I cannot count the 
number of constituents who have complained to me over the last several 
years about standing in a grocery line and watching the person in front 
of them use SNAP cards to buy luxuries that these hardworking taxpayers 
could not themselves afford.
  But it is the corporate welfare provisions that this bill continues, 
and in some case expands, that I find the most offensive.
  Yes, the bill shifts us away from direct payments to farmers; but it, 
instead, grossly expands taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance programs, 
eating up about three-quarters of the savings the supporters purport to 
achieve. The practical effect is to guarantee profits to farmers, while 
shifting their losses to taxpayers.
  We're told that if the bill fails, these wasteful programs will 
continue with no reform. Well, actually, many of the most wasteful 
programs would expire, like the $150 million to advertise farmers 
markets.
  But the fine point of it is this: If this bill is defeated, the House 
can take up real reform at any time. If it is passed, we kick that can 
another 5 years down the road.
  To those who say this is a small step in the right direction, I would 
agree, it is a very small step. It makes tiny and modest changes to an 
utterly atrocious program. According to the CBO, it would save all of 
3.4 percent from the baseline over the next 5 years, hardly a crowning 
achievement for fiscal reform.
  But there's no blinking at the fact that these programs are 
fundamentally unfair and grossly wasteful, and this bill locks them 
into law for another 5 years. If the supporters of this bill were 
actually serious about incremental reform, this would be a 1-year 
authorization with additional reforms planned next year. It most 
decidedly is not.
  Let me explain clearly what this bill means to an average, 
hardworking, taxpaying family in my district. That family must struggle 
and scrimp to keep their shop open. They bear the entire financial risk 
of failure; and their profits, if there are any, are heavily taxed.
  A portion of that family's taxes goes to the agriculture industry for 
the express purpose of inflating the prices that that family must pay 
at the grocery store. As a result, when the family goes grocery 
shopping, it must scrimp again in order to bear these artificially 
higher prices that have been forced up by their own high taxes.
  As that family stands in the checkout line with their ground chuck 
for the barbecue tonight, they watch SNAP cards used by others to pay 
for premium steaks that family can't afford for itself, but paid for by 
that family's own high taxes.
  If the economy sours, that family bears its own losses, while it also 
pays to cover the losses of the same agricultural interests responsible 
for their pain at the grocery store.
  The bill before us continues this travesty for another 5 years, with 
soothing assurances from its supporters to cheer up, things could be 
worse. Well, actually, things couldn't be much worse, and they could be 
a whole lot better.
  This bill, for example, could be defeated and replaced with genuine 
reform. The government could be withdrawn from its corrupt 
interventions in agricultural markets. The food stamp program could be 
restored to its original purpose, to provide basic commodities to the 
truly needy, and individual consumers could be free to determine the 
price of their groceries by the decisions that they make every day over 
what to spend at the grocery store, and not on the basis of what deals 
were cut in Congress.
  The Roman writer Phaedrus summed up this bill rather neatly 20 
centuries ago. He said:

       A mountain was in labor, sending forth dreadful groans, and 
     there was in the region the highest expectation. After all 
     that, it brought forth a mouse.

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