The conference committee on the farm and food bill started in earnest last week. Provisions I authored to establish a farm payment cap of $250,000 and close loopholes used by non-farmers to game the system were included in both the Senate and House bills. Congressman Jeff Fortenberry sponsored the provisions in the House bill.
Our efforts were recently given a boost when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report outlining many of the current shortcomings of the eligibility rules for farm programs. The report shows that there is still far too much subterfuge of the actively engaged law. For instance, taxpayers are footing the bill for farm payments to 11 active managers of one farm who supposedly provide significant management experience, yet perform no labor. The report also says that the legislative language in the Senate- and House-passed farm bills would be an appropriate fix to the agency’s findings.
The reform in the bills ends some of the most egregious abuses of the farm program and makes sure that the farm program payments are going to those who need them most, and it saves money. We try to make sure that 22 people no longer get farm payments through a single farm entity using loopholes, (especially when 16 of those 22 members aren’t doing any labor, as the GAO report pointed out), and we aim to prevent 70 percent of the farm payments from going to the top 10 percent of farms by size.
I’ve made clear that the farm payment provisions should have a “Do Not Touch” stamp applied to them. The provisions are nearly identical in the two bills and should not be up for negotiation.
Still, some members of the conference committee have already made clear of their intention to remove the reforms. By removing the payment limits and the provisions to close loopholes, these members are only making the safety net more susceptible to criticism and vulnerable to elimination.
The safety net is important to a safe and affordable food supply for the country, and it would be short-sighted to allow such a parochial mindset to undermine an important and necessary policy.