July 27, 2010

Dear Agriculture Committee:

Just over two years ago, Congress had an opportunity to draft and enact a farm bill that protects taxpayers and ends century old subsidies that do little for farmers. Taxpayers for Common Sense worked in a broad coalition to reform the nation’s farm programs to be better for taxpayers and the vast majority of farmers. Unfortunately, Congress settled for the politics of the past and business as usual. The new law could just as well have been written by the farm commodity program lobby.

• Commodity loan rates and/or target prices were increased, thereby increasing payments for some subsidized crops, such as wheat, barley and oats.
• Previously unsubsidized crops were added to the subsidy list.
• Farm families earning up to $2.5 million in net income would remain eligible for farm commodity subsidies.
• A new so-called “permanent disaster aid” program, costing nearly $4 billion, will provide a slush fund with routine handouts to farmers from a handful of states who already receive traditional commodity subsidies not to mention federally subsidized crop insurance designed to cover crop losses. And we have seen that the disaster title has not ended claims for ad hoc assistance.
• The optional Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program, which was touted as reform and a new direction for farm commodity programs, is not being pursued by large number of farmers because of complexity and other competing programs provide larger subsidies.
• “Direct payment” subsidies, which are given to farmers even when their incomes are skyrocketing and could have been eliminated altogether in these times of record farm incomes, was cut by a miniscule two-percent over five years.
• Continuation of trade distorting cotton subsidies that were ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization led USDA to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to not place punitive tariffs on U.S. goods.

As the committee looks to drafting a new farm bill, we again urge you to fundamentally re-orient the program. The commitment to revise the cotton program obtained by Brazil should lead the committee to rewrite the commodity title to be more balanced and truly only a safety net that puts the nation on a glide path to reduce agriculture subsidies.

Sincerely, 

Ryan Alexander

President