Progress Illinois

Last week we wondered if Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-IL) would cave to pressure from the agribusiness lobby and vote against President Obama's first budget proposal because it placed a cap on "direct payment" farm subsidies (described by Jonathan Chait as "the least justifiable slice of a totally unjustifiable program"). At the last minute, Halvorson backed the budget, but only after she and other members of the House Committee on Agriculture reinstated the giveaway to large farms.

That she opposed the provision isn't particularly surprising, considering that her 11th Congressional District has received over $1 billion in direct payments since 1995.

Industrial farmers and their surrogates in Washington have long hyped farm subsidies as a financial cushion that helps stabilize prices, particularly during lean years. Yesterday, in an interview with downstate radio station WJBC, Halvorson echoed this argument, saying: "You don't want those peaks and valleys.  You want something stable." But agricultural economist Bruce Babcock of Iowa State University recently countered that eliminating all agricultural subsidies would raise prices of corn, wheat, and soybeans by less than one percent.  As Chait has further noted: "It is virtually impossible to find an economist on the left, right, or center who defends agriculture subsidies, which are costly, distort the market, and hurt the Third World poor."

Before being stripped from the House and Senate budget bills, Obama's proposal to phase out subsidies to farms with over $500,000 in gross annual sales was expected to bring in $1 billion in additional yearly revenue.  So where was that money going to be spent? On child nutrition programs that aim to provide higher quality school lunches. 

Now, as the Des Moines Register reports, the administration needs to find a new source of revenue for this initiative:

Congress is due to write new rules for school lunches and other federal child nutrition programs this year and will debate plans to expand eligibility for free meals and to address child obesity by improving the lunches' quality.

School nutrition directors also want Congress to increase federal subsidies for meals. [...]

Asked whether the administration would propose a source of money for the child nutrition bill, an Agriculture Department spokeswoman said only that "we look forward to working with Congress to reauthorize the expiring" programs.

Final budget negotiations will occur when Congress reconvenes from its Easter break. But that Halvorson apparently cast her vote only after the costly and counterproductive subsidy was restored is more than troubling. In bowing to special interests, her legislating will be damaging to millions of nation's neediest children.