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Elizabeth Becker explains the mystery of the farm bill's resistance to reform efforts on The Washington Post opinion page this morning:
Why has the reform movement been such a flop? Because most members of Congress won't be thinking about farms when they vote for the farm bill. They'll be voting for the only part of the program that matters to them: food stamps -- one of the last safety nets for the millions of poor who are their constituents....For most lawmakers, details about the farm program are irrelevant. It is the food stamp program that counts.That is the strategic beauty of the farm bill. While it is written in the Agriculture Committees -- where the 30 farm districts that receive two-thirds of the subsidies are well represented -- the bill wins support from the overwhelmingly urban and suburban Congress by virtue of its nutrition section, which authorizes the food stamp program....Who would vote against a bill that helps 25 million people with emergency food aid every year and the 4 million who rely on food pantries and soup kitchens every week?That is the quandary. There will be no deep reforms of farm policy as long as the welfare of the poor is tied to the welfare of corporate farmers. But hunger activists fear that the food stamp entitlement might disappear outside of the farm bill.The fact that the example Becker points to of efforts to undo the program came from the Gingrich Congress of more than a decade ago suggests the greatest point of worry about the sustainability of the Food Stamps program has passed, and that new efforts to disentangle the Food Stamps entitlement from the overall farm bill would be worthwhile. Besides, one would think there would be some other kind of permanently successful legislation to which the Food Stamp program could be attached if it's too weak to stand alone.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
