John McCain On The Farm Bill

"I may surprise some people by saying what few presidential candidates would ever be willing to say out loud in farm country: I'd veto the farm bill -- a bloated expansion in federal spending that will do more harm than good." -- John McCain


Farming For Riches
By John McCain
Chicago Tribune
May 20, 2008

I may surprise some people by saying what few presidential candidates would ever be willing to say out loud in farm country: I'd veto the farm bill -- a bloated expansion in federal spending that will do more harm than good.

When agricultural commodity prices and exports have reached record highs, we no longer need government-grown farms and mammoth government bureaucracies. As grocery bills soar, food banks go bare and food rationing occurs on a global scale, we must challenge the wisdom of this bill. We must question policies that divert more than 25 percent of corn out of the food supply and into subsidized ethanol production. We must question a supply-control sugar program that costs Americans $2 billion annually in higher sugar prices.

Can we honestly demand fair and free trade from other countries when this bill increases trade distorting payment rates and restores an illegal cotton program? Sen. Barack Obama has raised the rhetoric on fair trade and restoring fiscal discipline, but his support for the farm bill betrays the inconsistency of his position: Cry foul with our trade partners, but break the rules at home.

The majority of subsidies in this proposal go to large commercial farms that average $200,000 in annual income and $2 million in net worth, and the bill allows a single farmer to earn more than $1 million before cutting subsidies. How can we credibly extend this largesse to this constituency? If I am elected president, I will seek an end to all farm subsidies and tariffs that are not based on clear need.

The farm bill will cost taxpayers nearly $300 billion, including $5 billion for direct payments each year to farmers, regardless of whether they grow anything. Growing better crops using less land, water and natural resources requires a more robust research approach, but this bill spends more than twice as much on direct payments as it does on agricultural research.

I am not opposed to providing a reasonable risk management for farmers. When farmers suffer from a natural disaster such as droughts or floods, we should assist them. But this bill fails to make the reforms needed to provide that assistance responsibly.

Such sensible reforms may be missing, but the pork is not. Congress should be ashamed of this mockery of its promise to rein in waste and earmarks. Buried within its hundreds of pages is $93 million in tax breaks for race horses, a $4 billion trust fund for disaster payments on top of subsidized crop insurance that is supposed to take care of such "disasters," and the list goes on. If that wasn't enough, this bill would send $250 million of taxpayers' money to Plum Creek Timber Co. in Montana. Plum Creek, according to its Web site, "is the largest and most geographically diverse private land owner in the nation" and paid a healthy dividend to shareholders last quarter.

It is time to wean ourselves from the huge crop subsidies being paid by taxpayers and the flawed policies that distort the markets, artificially raise prices for consumers and pit producers against consumers.

Read John McCain's Op-Ed


"Barack Obama talks about taking on the special interests. This farm bill would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. But Obama supported the bill, just as he supported the 2005 energy bill that was a Christmas tree for the oil and gas industries. Obama's vote may help him win Iowa, but it will lead to higher global food prices and more hunger in Africa. Moreover, it raises questions about how exactly he expects to bring about the change that he promises." -- The New York Times' David Brooks

Talking Versus Doing
By David Brooks
New York Times
May 20, 2008

In 1965, Mancur Olson wrote a classic book called "The Logic of Collective Action," which pointed out that large, amorphous groups are often less powerful politically than small, organized ones. He followed it up with "The Rise and Decline of Nations." In that book, Olson observed that as the number of small, organized factions in a society grows, the political culture becomes more divisive, the economy becomes more rigid and the nation loses vitality.

If you look around America today, you see the Olson logic playing out. Interest groups turn every judicial fight into an ideological war. They lobby for more spending on the elderly, even though the country is trillions of dollars short of being able to live up to its promises. They've turned environmental concern into subsidies for corn growers and energy concerns into subsidies for oil companies.

The $307 billion farm bill that rolled through Congress is a perfect example of the pattern. Farm net income is up 56 percent over the past two years, yet the farm bill plows subsidies into agribusinesses, thoroughbred breeders and the rest.

The growers of nearly every crop will get more money. Farmers in the top 1 percent of earners qualify for federal payments. Under the legislation, the government will buy sugar for roughly twice the world price and then resell it at an 80 percent loss. Parts of the bill that would have protected wetlands and wildlife habitat were deleted or shrunk.

My colleagues on The Times's editorial page called the bill "disgraceful." My former colleagues at The Wall Street Journal's editorial page ripped it as a "scam." Yet such is the logic of collective action; the bill is certain to become law. It passed with 81 votes in the Senate and 318 in the House -- enough to override President Bush's coming veto. Nearly everyone in Congress got something.

The question amid this supposed change election is: Who is going to end this sort of thing?

Barack Obama talks about taking on the special interests. This farm bill would have been a perfect opportunity to do so. But Obama supported the bill, just as he supported the 2005 energy bill that was a Christmas tree for the oil and gas industries.

Obama's vote may help him win Iowa, but it will lead to higher global food prices and more hunger in Africa. Moreover, it raises questions about how exactly he expects to bring about the change that he promises.

If elected, Obama's main opposition will not come from Republicans. It will come from Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill. Already, the Democratic machine is reborn. Lobbyists are now giving 60 percent of their dollars to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The pharmaceutical industry, the defense industry and the financial sector all give more money to Democrats than Republicans. If Obama is actually going to bring about change, he's going to have to ruffle these sorts of alliances. If he can't do it in an easy case like the farm bill, will he ever?

John McCain opposed the farm bill. In an impassioned speech on Monday, he declared: "It would be hard to find any single bill that better sums up why so many Americans in both parties are so disappointed in the conduct of their government, and at times so disgusted by it."

McCain has been in Congress for decades, but he has remained a national rather than a parochial politician. The main axis in his mind is not between Republican and Democrat. It's between narrow interest and patriotic service. And so it is characteristic that he would oppose a bill that benefits the particular at the expense of the general.

In fact, in this issue, McCain may have found a theme to unify his so far scattershot campaign. He has always been an awkward ideological warrior. In any case, this year may not be the best year for Republicans to launch a right versus left crusade. But McCain has infinitely better grounds than Obama to run as a do-what-it-takes reformer.

He has a long record of taking on not only the other party, but his own. In the current Weekly Standard, the brilliant young writer Yuval Levin suggests that McCain put reforming America's decrepit governing institutions at the center of his presidential race.

Levin points out that the health care system, the immigration system, the regulatory system and the entitlement system all need reforms. Instead of talking about personal honor or perpetual tax cuts, McCain should focus relentlessly on modernization.

In fact, Monday in Detroit, McCain declared: "In all my reforms, the goal is not to denigrate government but to make it better, not to deride government but to restore its good name."

Obama, sad to say, failed the farm bill test. McCain may have found a theme for a nation that has lost faith in its own institutions.

Read The David Brooks Article In The New York Times.