April 23, 2018

U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Representative,

On behalf of the more than one million members and supporters of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, I urge you to take a fiscally conservative stand regarding the Farm Bill’s commodities and rural infrastructure sections.

While we applaud the new employment and training requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), we remain concerned about other provisions in the bill.

Most of the attention surrounding the Farm Bill has been focused on SNAP, but the agriculture portion of the bill continues the same wasteful policies that have permeated past Farm Bills. The American people deserve a free-market Farm Bill, and the House bill in its current form does not begin to meet those requirements.

The current federal agriculture policies are a major source of cronyism. Federal programs should not benefit special interests at the expense of taxpayers, consumers, other industries, and other farmers.

The federal government allows farmers to use risk-related assistance to guarantee themselves profits. Federal assistance should only be provided for major crop loss from uncontrollable natural events. It should not be protecting farmers from lower-than-expected revenue.

With this bill, the House Agriculture Committee has crafted yet another protectionist bill that does nothing to remove existing interventionist policies that insulate farmers from market forces, driving up the cost of food for every American.

The Farm Bill not only fails to fix the infirmities in the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) broadband loan and grant program, it also creates a new $350 million rural broadband grant program, an addition to the $600 million that was included in the Omnibus appropriations bill. Even worse, the new program lacks the protections that were written into the Omnibus in an effort to ensure that the money allocated to provide broadband to unserved homes accomplishes its goal. Rather than keeping spending in check, the Farm Bill increases the authorization level for RUS fivefold without fixing any of the host of problems with the program.

Since House Democrats have walked away from the process, free-market Republicans who are not on the Committee should take the opportunity to demand a bolder set of reforms for the commodities and rural infrastructure sections of the legislation.

Sincerely,

Tom Schatz
President, CCAGW

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