Suppose a food crisis hits in, say, Zambia. Or to be more precise--suppose basic staples have skyrocketed by 129% across the globe, to the point that the UN has predicted shortages may stoke civil wars across the developing world. What do you do? Well, if you're the director of USAID, you'll immediately direct your staff to buy food to help. That is, food grown by American producers. Then you bundle it up and ship it--in primarily American vessels-- to countries across the ocean, where people hungrily await the needed stocks. The whole process will take up to six months. And by the time it's through, particularly with rising fuel costs, fully 65% of so-called "food-aid" expenditures will be absorbed by overhead alone.
Of course, this isn't a defensible form of policy. But under the 1985 farm bill, those are the rules, and that's exactly the system Congress has continued to endorse. And today as members prepare to announce the farm bill, it looks like that's precisely what Congress is preparing to do again. According to the latest reports, despite Bush's call for increased food-aid flexibility, the farm bill will provide just $60 million for a pilot program that would allow the purchase of food from from local producers overseas. That's only a 4% change in overall total giving. [Eds. Note: Corrected from .04%]
So in a time of soaring agricultural profits and food crisis, this is what they've delivered: a shiny, gift-wrapped $300-boondoggle that keeps inflated farmer subsidies and rejects food-aid reform. Oh, and hands out tax breaks on behalf of people like Sen. Mitch McConnell, who got $498-million tax break for his home-state thoroughbred industry.
Still unclear if Bush will go ahead and veto the bill. Either way, it's just another reminder of the stakes--and constituencies--that Congress is willing to go to the mat for.
--Te-Ping Chen
