Last week, the members of today’s famously divided Congress got together for a rare show of bipartisan cooperation, passing the Agriculture Act. The bill is comprehensive — 949 pages and $946 billion — and received support from lawmakers in both parties, as well as from President Obama.
Political commentators have been bemoaning the deadlock and lack of action that have come from Congress for the past few years, so it would be natural to assume that Congress finally doing something substantial would be cause for celebration.
Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.
The farm bill has two major components: food stamps and massive subsidies for the farm industry. While the merits of food stamps are debatable, it is the subsidy part of the bill that is most evidently a bad idea. Essentially, the bill gives a subsidy of billions of dollars to an industry that does not need it.
When the government bailed out the auto and banking industries in 2008, there was massive outrage. The bank bailout, in particular, drew wide condemnation, even sparking movements such as Occupy Wall Street, as citizens felt that bankers were being unfairly rescued.
Whatever you think about the 2008 bailouts, it is undeniable that both the financial and auto industries were in trouble. Those industries would have taken substantial damage without subsidies, yet the bailouts were still deeply troubling to a wide segment of the American population.
The farming industry, in contrast, is doing great. Since 2008, the value of farm assets has increased by 50 percent. It is not an industry in dire need, yet Congress still insists on sending billions of dollars its way, at a time when the government is cutting other programs in the name of fiscal responsibility. The subsidies cannot even be defended as a means to help struggling Americans, because it is well known that they disproportionately benefit large, wealthy agribusinesses rather than smaller, poorer farmers.
Where, then, is the outrage?
Many members of our UNC community have been outraged over North Carolina’s education budget cuts, which have erased almost half a billion dollars from the UNC systems budget since 2011.
