Top Ten Reasons to Reject the House Farm Bill

[limpyhobbler]

The budget-busting farm bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee late Wednesday night is quite simply the worst piece of farm and food legislation in decades. The bill will feed fewer people, help fewer farmers, do less to promote healthy diets and weaken environmental protections – and it will cost far more than congressional bean counters say.

Here are the TOP TEN reasons to reject the bill:

• Cuts Nutrition Assistance by $16 billion – Hard economic times mean that more Americans than ever before depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps) to get an adequate diet, and nearly half of them are kids. The House bill proposes to cut $16 billion in SNAP funding that low-income Americans rely on. More than 2 million Americans will lose benefits under the farm bill devised by the committee’s leaders, Reps. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Collin Peterson (D-Minn.).



• Gives Big Farmers a Big Raise – The Lucas-Peterson farm bill would give every big subsidized grower a raise in the form of higher price guarantees for their crops – at a time when large commercial farms have average household incomes of more than $200,000 a year and net farm income has nearly doubled in recent years. The largest 10 percent of subsidized growers collect roughly three-fourths of federal farm subsidies, so the Lucas-Peterson farm bill will give mega-farms even more tax dollars to drive out small family farmers.
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http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2012/07/top-ten-reason-to-reject-the-house-farm-bill/

[osqosaoj]

1. Most farmers vote for Republican candidates

They come from rural areas and tend to have socially conservative views. If we let this pass we are only giving more power to the reich-wingers and their power structure.

There are places where that money could be better spent, for instance subsidies for recent Latino and African immigrants.

[limpyhobbler]

2. Huh? You want to give subsidies to recent immigrants? Can you explain what you mean?

[osqosaoj]

3. There should be a safety net for all people

A lot of immigrants from Latin America come here in wretched poverty, escaping a desperate life in their own country. I think giving them some assistance to get on their feet and providing them with a well-equipped safety net that lets them work in this country, perhaps like getting them job training, teaching them English for work, or giving them housing and food, would be better in a long run for them (also providing them a path to citizenship if they are undocumented workers).

Of course this should apply to all poor people, especially poor disadvantaged minorities as well, but in many ways immigrants have an added disadvantage.