Washington, D.C. – The following is a statement by Ms. Ryan Alexander, President of Taxpayers for Common Sense (TCS), on TCS’s partnership with Oxfam America and others in efforts to produce a reform-oriented Senate Farm Bill.
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What Taxpayers for Common Sense wants in a Senate farm bill is simple – less taxpayer waste, a smaller budgetary footprint, and significant reform to the Title I commodity programs.
The so-called reform in the House Farm Bill will actually increase taxpayer handouts to some of the largest and wealthiest farmers out there. For example, after feeding at the subsidy trough for dozens of years to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars, sugar and rice farmers will be in line for bigger handouts.
We are working with groups such as Oxfam America and others to bring savings to taxpayers. Those savings should come from modifying the current crop insurance program so that taxpayers don’t pick up 60 cents of every dollar spent on crop insurance; from phasing out the direct, counter-cyclical and loan deficiency programs so that taxpayers don’t pay farmers in times or record profits; and from means testing the current subsidy system so that millionaire farmers would be cut out of the subsidy game.
At the end of the day we don’t expect to get everything we want, but we think we can achieve some of our goals – such as ending farm payments to the fat cats on Park Avenue and in the hills of San Francisco.
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