The Stronghold by Thomas F. Schaller

Author:Thomas F. Schaller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

Pig Farming

American politics is replete with contradictions in terms: “military intelligence,” “bureaucratic efficiency,” “negative growth,” and “congressional ethics.” But by the midpoint of the Bush presidency, a new Washington oxymoron began generating nearly equal criticism from both left and right: “big-government conservatism.” The federal budget grew by 30 percent in Bush’s first three years in office, and fiscal hawks started to complain that Washington Republicans no longer valued limited government. If Medicare Part D was Exhibit A in the indictment against Republicans, Exhibits B and C were the 2002 farm bill and the explosion in congressional earmarks.

Farmers have historically supported Republicans, but farming districts and states today are redder than ever. The states of the central plains have voted loyally Republican in presidential elections since the rise of the Great Society and feature mostly Republican-dominated House and Senate delegations. Of the top ten states in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) farm subsidy spending per capita—North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Montana, Kansas, Arkansas, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Idaho—only Minnesota votes reliably Democratic in presidential contests, and thirteen of the states’ twenty U.S. senators are Republican. Of the top twenty-five House districts in terms of USDA subsidies, nineteen are represented by Republicans.6

The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 was thus a political bouquet delivered by congressional Republicans to a key constituency. To its credit, the Bush administration initially opposed the legislation; Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman delineated the Bush administration’s reservations about the proposed legislation.7 The problem prior to 2002 was that loopholes in the 1996 law permitted large farms and corporate-owned agribusiness giants to apply for multiple subsidies. For example, a farm could be split into several separate corporations, each of which could apply for the maximum subsidy. This violated Congress’s intent to subsidize small-farm families. Despite the Republican Party’s incessant championing of free-market competition and the value of small and family-owned businesses, and its veneration of American farmers, the 1996 farm law—supported, it must be noted, by Clinton agriculture secretary Dan Glickman—turned out to be a giant corporate welfare subsidy for Big Ag. “Taxpayers are paying billions of dollars to subsidize prosperous farms,” wrote Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation as the new farm bill was nearing passage in early 2002. “Making matters worse, many of the large farms that receive subsidies have used these funds to buy out small farms and consolidate the agriculture industry.”8

The 2002 bill was only going to make matters worse. Yet when some congressional Republicans in 2002 proposed floor amendments to clarify or enforce the subsidy limits, they were shot down by their own party. Michigan’s Nick Smith—the same Nick Smith later embroiled in Tom DeLay’s Medicare Part D bribery case—proposed two amendments to the House’s version of the bill, both of which would have enforced the annual upper limits of $150,000 per farm. One amendment was defeated 238–157, with 70 percent of Republicans opposing it; the other was defeated by voice vote, with most Republicans presumably again opposed. And when an effort

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