The Contemptible Select Committee

The growing Republican Debacle

The Contemptible Select Committee

The Farm Bill

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

     Football is a great institution.  It is there that Americans, regardless of differences, learn to love the smell of the freshly clipped fields without outside influences or prejudices.  Those who experienced the smell of turf pushed up through those facemasks now regard those times with great nostalgia.  Regardless where their lives take them, they will be  . . . football players. 

     Pound for pound, one of the greatest players of all time smelled the grass in the rocked confines of James Stadium in Silver City, New Mexico.  Paul Hunter had to pour lead in his pants to ever weigh 180 pounds, but he went on to play professional football in an era that rewarded players only by extending the opportunity of playing for the pure joy of the sport.

     In Paul’s book, Gold – Is where You Find It – Gold Mines – Golden Era – Gold Metals – Golden Opportunities, I was reminded that he and I, without any collaboration, seem to find it difficult to formulate a single title for anything.  Perhaps it has something to do with a shared heritage . . . the smell of the clipped grass of James Stadium.  It is not the titles, though, that are so profound in Paul’s thinking.  It is his ability to reduce complicated issues into simple and profound words.

     It is amazing how many times I have opened Paul’s book and the same page emerges. It reads, “Even a robber understands that if they are to stay in business, they have to rob people with full cupboards.  They are soon out business if they rob people with bare cupboards.” 

     If only our government understood those words.

     Robbing the cupboard

     The Super Committee has demonstrated to us the failure of our government.  We are clearly seeing the tyranny from leaders who are ushered into Washington and ultimately don’t have the political will and courage that is takes to defend the promises made when the folks back home entrusted them with their vote.

     We are learning that the closed door sessions of those politicos threw a pretty wide loop in the length and breadth of their historic talks.  Those who believe government must be grown because of fear and distrust of the people remained true to form.  We know they will rob the cupboard until there is nothing left. 

     It is the others those who identify themselves as advocates who believe it is the people who are the true stewards of the public interest that are worrisome.  Those Republicans are showing all the signs that when the real battle is upon them they act no differently from their political foes.  We must then assume one thing.  They are ineffective in the dynamics of the Washington gridlock.

     The continued onslaught

     I don’t like the terms Super or Select Committee.  Neither truly reflects the contemptuous abrogation by Congress to avoid the nasty appearance of partisan impasse.  If you will pardon the indulgence, I will henceforth refer to the body as the Directorate of Internal Collective Subordination (DICS) because collective subordination by Washington leadership is a long practiced approach to governance.    

     What the DICS have concluded is they will agree to tax increases on the basis that there remains an appearance of a united front on the promise of long term spending cuts.  They have also sanctioned more clandestine spending.

       The Democrats are willing to go along with the charade knowing they can play rope-a-dope and life will go on without recourse to any promises made (they also know that a big portion of the pending $1.7 trillion mandatory cuts if there is no resolution will affect the Defense budget).  The Republicans are signaling that their strategy is simply a measure to get to the 2012 elections when the numbers will likely be better for any action on their part. 

     The Farm Bill

     There is leaked evidence that the upcoming Farm Bill will be a depository of a portion of the secret spending intentions.  The full extent of the planned adjustments to the Farm Bill will play out over time, but the Farm Bill itself must be discussed in a greater national debate.  It is a Trojan horse of biblical proportions.

     First, it is no longer a ‘Farm Bill’.  Of the titles in the draft well less than half actually impact conservation issues.  The majority have become social reform and redistribution schemes.    

     Less than half of the USDA budget can now be characterized as being anything close to farm related expenditures and a big portion of the latter can be arguably described as environmentally driven.  Fully 52% of the budget as reflected in the new Farm Bill will be paid toward nutritional programs . . . food stamps. 

     In August, 2011 the number of recipients in the food stamp program included 45.8 million Americans.  This is up 28.9 million Americans since 2000.  At the rate of historical growth in the food stamp program, the entire nation can be expected to be on food stamps three years into the next century (this calculation is likely understating the rapidity of the growth in the program because it does not include the premise of at least one nutritional think tank that three of ten Americans now in need of food stamps are not even in the program)!

    Another measure of how to describe the Farm Bill as it is now trending is to understand that $148 billion of the budget is going to nutritional programs and $144 billion is going to other expenditures of which part are remotely related to farming.

     The cancerous dilemma

     I find myself at odds with the majority of my colleagues in support of farm programs.  I fear them and I view it as a mechanism to trap agriculture in a spiraling freefall into ever increasing federal involvement.  There is also some real world experience at play.  In the crops I was associated with in the majority of my career, there were no federal programs.  In every case, they were as profitable as or more profitable than any crops without such programs.  There was also the absence of governmental interaction.  Until I experienced the difference, I had no idea how much easier my life had been.    

     The Farm Bill itself is the case in point.  The problem farmers find themselves in when defending the Farm Bill is that they can no longer take a position against the peripheral expenditures of the Bill.  If they do, they run the risk that their argument will boomerang and come back and to bite them.  Whether they like it or not, they have become unwilling supporters and coconspirators of the one of the greatest of the government growth programs, the socially driven and redistributive food giveaway programs.  The producer proponents are in dangerous no man’s land, and the longer this calamitous union of missions exists the more difficult it will be to separate and terminate the hoax.

     This is serious business

     Through all the hoopla of the danger our country faces in the burgeoning deficit spending, a strong argument can be made that no progress has been made.  Not a single course of action has been set in place to counter the long term cataclysm that we face.  The nation knows what to expect with the Democrats in Congress.  Their tracks will be covered by the prevailing press and they will willingly rob the cupboard until it is completely bare.

      The nation is also becoming convinced the Republicans are no better.  It was Thomas Jefferson who described the division of political beliefs that the Republicans espouse to support . . . the belief that the sovereign individual is the honest and lasting cornerstone of the public’s best interest.  Since the midterms of 2010, though, there is the gnawing realization that these late season Republicans are simply pretenders willing to play the game until all their armies are staged, all their warehouses are full of provisions, and all the moons are aligned.

     The problem is they may not get that chance.  In fact, they may not deserve to get that chance.  Great battles have been won not on the basis of preparedness, but on the basis of diligent resolve and willingness to risk everything.  The Republicans in Washington are simply playing the game and it is not sitting well with the folks in the hinterland . . .  the folks who have to keep trying to stock the cupboards.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.  “Let’s envision a process whereby every member of Congress is issued a number.  Until the budget is balanced, every Friday afternoon one of those numbers is drawn, and, on the front steps of the Capital, the leader holding that number is publicly sacrificed . . . no, not a matter of capital termination, but simply dismissed from Congress and sent home without any wages, benefits, or allowances to return.  How long would it take to balance the budget?”   

THE WESTERNER sez

Spending is the problem. Everyone understands this except Congress, the President and the rest of the DC Deep Thinkers. 

Every hour of every day the feds spend $188 million they don't have.  That means if you spent 5 hours preparing Thanksgiving dinner, the feds would have spent the so-called $1 billion in "cuts".  And they couldn't even do that.