The American Enterprise Institute’s Summer edition of the Seasonal Harvest agricultural policy newsletter included a Taxpayers for Common Sense staff-authored article on the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC).

Created during the Great Depression, the CCC has evolved from a tool to simply cut and track checks for farm bill programs to a source of nearly unrestrained administrative power. By exercising what’s known as “Section 5 Charter Act Authority,” Secretaries of Agriculture have increasingly used the CCC to increase spending, expand farm supports far from the farm gate, and at times directly undermine Congressional intent.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and other advocates for increased federal subsidization of agriculture are calling on Congress to raise the Charter Act’s $30 billion borrowing limit while expanding the Secretary of Agriculture’s discretionary authority to spend these increased funds. Doing so would not only increase federal deficits, but undermine Congress’s opportunity and responsibility to develop the nation’s food and farm policies through legislative action.

With the nation holding nearly $40 trillion in debt and facing trillion-dollar annual deficits, taxpayers cannot afford policies explicitly designed to increase special interest subsidies through additional federal borrowing. Instead, Congress must work to craft more responsible federal spending by reclaiming its Constitutionally derived power of the purse.

You can download the full report here or read it below.