The Farm Bill

Direct payments versus food stamps.  Guess which way rural, conservative congressmen want to cut.  Yglesias tees off on Roy Blunt:

Representative Roy Blunt (R-MO), for example, wants to make sure that we take food out of the mouths of poor children rather than cutting farm subsidies:

Blunt says nutrition funding – which could account for 75 percent of ag spending in the next Farm Bill – should not be exempt.
“Are there better ways to deliver the food assistance programs without assuming that they just are untouchable and we’ll just look at the 25 percent that impacts direct payments and farm families and rural communities and cut that and take everything out of that?” Blunt offers.
Blunt says direct payments are lower now because of higher commodity prices and he advocates keeping programs in place that encourage farmers to continue to compete in the marketplace.

Note that giving customers money with which to buy food ends up enhancing farmers’ income. In that respect, it’s no different from offering farmers direct payments to grow food. The difference is that nutritional assistance specifically helps poor people as well as farmers, while “direct payments” specifically help “producers with eligible historical production of wheat, corn, grain sorghum, barley, oats, upland cotton, rice, soybeans, other oilseeds, and peanuts” along with consumers of those products. Ultimately, this program does a lot to serve the interests of large landowners whereas nutrition assistance can help people in need.

Actually, I would say that direct payments to farmers end up with landowners, while food stamp money ends up with food processors and grocery stores.  The main increase in income to farmers from the government the last few years has been through the ethanol and biodiesel subsidies and the financial bailout, each of which put pressure on the commodity markets, and have dramatically driven up prices.  None of these programs have been very efficient.