We don’t normally associate Manhattan’s Upper East Side with farming. Especially its 10021 neighborhood. But thanks to the magic of federal spending, folks here have collected almost a million dollars in farm aid.
That’s what we found when we plugged 10021 into the farm-subsidy database on the Web page for the Environmental Working Group. From 1995 through 2012, recipients in this ZIP code took home $941,670 in federal farm subsidies.
That’s worth keeping in mind as you read headlines about how the Democratic Senate and the Republican House are now haggling over the farm bill. When most Americans think of farm aid, they think of Kansas or Iowa. As the Upper East Side farm welfare shows, the farm bill has in fact become another lever for Washington’s crony capitalism — and here Republicans are proving themselves just as bad as Democrats.
The way farm aid gets through Congress in the first place helps explain the scam. Traditionally, food stamps have been included in the farm bill. That’s because farmers getting crop subsidies need the votes of legislators representing urban districts, who are more interested in food stamps. Today the payoff has become more expensive than the principal, with food stamps now accounting for more than 80% of the farm bill.
So we cheered when House Republicans last month defeated a farm bill that included food stamps. They did so on the grounds that if politicians had to vote on crop subsidies and food stamps on their individual merits — instead of as a mutually reinforcing bribe — we would get more responsible spending.
We cheered too soon.
On Thursday, House Republicans passed a bill that kept out food stamps but kept in agriculture subsidies. In some areas the bill spends more than what Democrats would.
This is a huge mistake, in both principle and practice. By cutting food stamps while protecting ag subsidies that favor farmers in red Republican states, the GOP lends credibility to the charge that, while it may be against subsidies for the poor, it’s only too happy to send them to the rich.