News
Lugar and Stutzman propose $40 billion in USDA cuts
With a $14.7 trillion national debt, there has been a lot of discussions on how and where to make budget cuts to meet federal deficit reduction goals. Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Congressman Marlin Stutzman (R, IN-3rd) introduced the Rural Economic Farm and Ranch Sustainability and Hunger (REFRESH) Act on Wednesday. Congressman Stutzman says REFRESH is the first comprehensive farm bill discussed in Washington and would cut $40 billion over ten years. He says hopefully it’s a start in truly reforming the ag system and making the Farm Bill about agriculture and not just a spending bill in Washington.
Roughly two-thirds of the savings would come from farm and conservation programs and a third from nutrition programs (which represents 75% of the USDA budget). He says one area of emphasis is the nutrition programs. Stutzman tells Brownfield their goal is to close loopholes and end a program that should be run in other places and not necessarily under the USDA arm. Stutzman says USDA should be focused on agriculture and not a welfare program.
Stutzman notes it is worth the discussion of eliminating direct payments. He says having a safety net in place gives farmers security knowing if they go out, invest, work hard and do all that it takes to grow a crop and try to make a profit. If that doesn’t happen, there is a safety net in place to protect them. He emphasized the importance for growers to know they are working within a free market system where supply and demand is driving the cost of both commodities and inputs.
The Lugar-Stutzman bill would establish an aggregate risk and revenue management program that would protect between 90 and 75 percent of expected crop revenue. The bill would also allow farmers to purchase supplemental revenue insurance underwritten by USDA’s Risk Management Agency.
Some of the key points of the REFRESH Act:
- Reforming farm programs would cut $16 billion (24.5% reduction)
- Update and streamline conservation programs to cut $11.3 billion (17.6% reduction)
- Reduce CRP acres from 29 million to 24 million.
- Close nutrition program loopholes would save $13.9 billion (only a 2% reduction)
- REFRESH replaces dairy price support and milk income loss contract programs with a voluntary margin program that covers 80 percent of the producers’ production history when margins fall below $4 per hundred weight.
- Mandatory repeal of the federal sugar program
AUDIO: Congressman Marlin Stutzman, REFRESH Act (11:26mp3)
Farmers haven’t worked under the law of supply and demand since the early 1800s! Have Lugar and Stutzman been living in a cave? When we have speculators at CBOT and NYSE “squaring positions and profit taking”, foreign governments charging import duties, and our own government allowing one way trade (think China and Japan’s exports to the US but not vice versa), and treaties that favor foreign countries (think NAFTA), and you can begin to see why the idea of the law of supply and demand actually working is ludicrous.
I would like to see the welfare system taken out of the USDA budget; people would begin to see how little of the national debt is attributed to farmers. Farmers, loggers, miners, and drillers are a few of the only ones who actually create new wealth. Everyone makes money off us, which is fine as long as we are allowed to make a fair profit as well.
Isn’t 1 billion 1000 million? Aren’t there less than 3 million farmers? If so, why not pay each farming operation $1 million which we would turn around immediately to buy new machinery and repair buildings? That would stimulate the economy and save money for USDA as well