Food Fight: Partisanship Kills Senate Farm Bill

Of all of the major news reports on the failed Senate farm bill (and there were dozens, see the Washington Post article here), I found that this front page San Francisco Chronicle article offered the best public choice insights about the political realities of farm subsidies:

Money troubles could be unraveling the age-old coalition of Democrats and Republicans that has preserved Depression-era farm subsidies for most of the past century, as pressure from nontraditional farm interests continues to be felt.

The Senate's failure Friday to move forward on a $288 billion, five-year farm bill delays the effort to preserve subsidies to farmers of cotton, corn, rice and a handful of other crops. At the same time, it blocks an increase in spending on a vast array of popular programs to improve the American diet, make farming practices more environmentally sustainable, and provide California fruit and vegetable growers a place in federal policy.

The formula of preserving crop subsidies while expanding programs that appeal to urban lawmakers has worked to keep the crop subsidy system alive for 70 years, even as the number of farmers receiving subsidies has shriveled and the payments have increasingly tilted to the largest and wealthiest farms. But with heavy lobbying by environmental groups, efforts to forge a compromise bill this year faced serious funding hurdles.

And here's the best sentence:

Farm state politicians in both parties face a big problem: the formula of buying off urban interests with food stamps and environmental money in return for keeping crop subsidies is forcing painful budget trade-offs.

In other words, the 70-year tradition of bipartisan consensus to fleece taxpayers, bestow generous benefits on well-organized, wealthy special-interest farm groups, in return for political support (votes, campaign contributions, etc.) fortunately broke down this time. Thank God for occassional partisanship and legislative gridlock.

As P.J. O'Rourke said, "I love legislative gridlock. What I hate is bipartisan consensus. Bipartisan consensus is like when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help."