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Trump Sends Farm-Welfare Checks to City Folk; Perdue Blames Congress for Executive Action

60 Minutes follows up on the Trump farm welfare boondoggle that has spent billions of dollars trying to bribe farmers into ignoring the damage done by Trump’s tariffs. Lesley Stahl questions the distribution of quarter-million dollar checks to wealthy urban paper partners who have never turned a furrow and gets USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue to pass the buck to Congress:

Remember this is taxpayer money. Secretary Perdue said if farmers are exploiting weak subsidy laws to get money they shouldn’t, it’s Congress’ fault.

Sonny Perdue: What I’m telling you, Lesley, is that we use the same criteria as Congress passed in the farm bill to determine who is eligible to receive money and who is not. That– that’s the facts.

Lesley Stahl: Ok.

Sonny Perdue: We– we are administrators of the law passed by Congress.

Lesley Stahl: But let me ask you, as the secretary of agriculture, if you think that’s a good idea. To have those– allow those partnerships to exist.

Sonny Perdue: I think, again, it really is the responsibility to Congress to determine this. From my perspective as an administrator, my job is to follow the law [Lesley Stahl, “Why Are Hundreds of People in Big Cities Receiving Bailout Money Meant for Farmers?60 Minutes, 2020.05.03].

I was going to accept Perdue’s passing the buck for passing the bucks to rich city folk and revel in Scyller Borglum‘s impending conversion of the issue into a campaign plank against U.S. Senator Mike Rounds. But that would be unfair, because neither Mike Rounds nor John Thune ever voted on MFP.

Donald Trump directed Secretary Perdue to come up with the Market Facilitation Program. The White House didn’t take MFP through Congress; rather than seeking Congressional approval for these controversial farm-welfare checks, the Trump Administration simply hijacked a 60-year-old law. Trump, not Congress, created MFP:

MFP assistance is different in critical ways from the other programs.  It was not authorized by Congress in either the 2018 Farm Bill nor in any ad hoc appropriations legislation.  The payments were made available to farmers using existing authorities of the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC).  The final rule specifies that payments are made pursuant to Section 5 of the CCC Charter Act of 1948.  The relevant parts of Section 5 authorizes assistance to “aid in the removal or disposition of surplus agricultural commodities . . . [i]ncrease the domestic consumption of agricultural commodities (other than tobacco) by expanding or aiding in the expansion of domestic markets or by developing and aiding in the development of new and additional markets, marketing facilities, or uses for such commodities” (USDA, CCC Charter Act).  USDA explained that the MFP payments were permissible under Section 5 because they “will provide producers with financial assistance that gives them the ability to absorb some of the additional costs from having to delay or reorient marketing of the new crop due to the trade actions of foreign governments resulting in the loss of exports” (USDA, Trade Mitigation Final Rule, at 3).  From a legal perspective, this is arguably a very creative interpretation of the CCC Section 5 authorities [Jonathan Coppess, Gary Schnitkey, Krista Swanson, and Carl Zulauf, “The Market Facilitation Program: A New Direction in Public Agricultural Policy,” University of Illinois: Farm Doc Daily, 2019.11.21].

Had Congress actually created MFP, we’d have had more public scrutiny and quite likely more oversight:

When Congress creates farm policy and designs programs to make direct assistance to farmers it does so in an open and deliberative process designed by the Founders in Article I of the Constitution.  Committees produce bills that are reviewed by others on the committee, analyzed by USDA, the Congressional Budget Office and academics.  These bills are reported on and subjected to public scrutiny.  More importantly, members of the committee have the ability to debate, amend and vote on the bills; to become law, any Congressionally-designed farm assistance program must survive an arduous legislative process and receive the support of at least a majority of the 435 duly elected members of Congress.  In contrast, MFP was created because President Trump directed the Secretary of Agriculture to provide assistance to farmers due to the tariff conflict and, specifically, the retaliatory tariffs from key agricultural export markets such as China.  USDA developed the specific aspects of MFP in a truncated rulemaking process.  While USDA has provided documentation as to the methodologies used to calculate MFP payments in 2018 and 2019 (USDA, 2018; USDA, 2019), both were published after the rulemaking process was completed.  In total, the MFP process has left substantial unanswered questions [Coppess et al., 2019.11.21].

Let a big-city millionaire craft ag policy, and expect big-city millionaires to get the checks.

9 Comments

  1. Curt 2020-05-04 09:28

    Cory – That’s why you’re better than 60 Minutes. You refuse to accept the simple answer and are willing to peel back the layers to expose the liars.

  2. Loren 2020-05-04 10:35

    The farmers that were interviewed kept talking about the effect of the tariffs on their markets/prices, and yet it was like they didn’t understand or care where that came from or who imposed them. I guess they still think China is providing the bribe $$$ that they are receiving. I’d like to feel sorry for their plight, but they keep voting Trumpublican. Sorry, but…

  3. Clyde 2020-05-04 10:51

    Whats new??? Only the rich are allowed to prosper in the good ol USA. Our farm programs now amount to forcing producers of feed grains to produce them as cheaply as humanly possible for the vertically integrated and controlled meat industry. Smithfield for the hogs and Tyson and Perdue for everything else. Of course, Du-Pont and now Bayer have to have their pockets lined along the way.
    American agriculture is only efficient at eliminating labor….by every other measure it is extremely inefficient.

  4. jerry 2020-05-04 13:51

    It’s starting to look like we’re gonna need another bailout for the farmers in Miami, San Francisco and New York City. trump is setting up some more “decoupling” from China, so that means more money for the cousins.

  5. Robin Friday 2020-05-04 17:26

    I can’t say for sure, Loren, but these farmers are Farmers Union. Farmers Union leans toward the common folk, not the zillionaires living in big cities. They are real farmers. I can’t say how they voted, because I don’t know. But I know not all farmers voted for Trump. Sadly, I suspect the ones who did will do it again.

  6. Debbo 2020-05-04 17:46

    Can we get some anti-trust TR style action going on in the USA? It’s badly needed.

  7. Clyde 2020-05-05 17:09

    Amen,Debbo. Without progressive leadership it ain’t going to happen though. Even the progressives we now have have been beaten into submission.

  8. Debbo 2020-05-06 00:22

    Muddled Misogynist wishes women were more like 50s housewives. He’s yearning for June Cleaver, pliable and obedient, pearls and heels.

    is.gd/KXAhQn

  9. Debbo 2020-05-10 14:53

    This may be good news for farmers. A company in Denmark is working on ways to feed cattle that reduces their methane belching and farting.

    “In Mootral’s first tests in dairy cows on a fully functioning farm, Brades, methane emissions fell 38%. A California study found a reduction of about 20% in meat cattle.”

    So that’s progress, but as I was reading I was wondering how it worked for weight gain. Was this feed finishing the beef cattle or maintaining the dairy cattle?

    “Researchers have shown an increase in milk production, possibly because cows that expend less energy expelling methane produce more dairy. The farmers at Brades said flies weren’t bothering their cows as much, perhaps as a result of garlic breath.”

    Evidently it’s good for milkers, but no word on beef growth. The product is natural and includes garlic, citrus and other things they didn’t name. Judging from the photos, it looks like they’re still feeding hay with Mootral’s pellet mixed in.

    The article says there are other companies working on the same issue using different things, some all chemicals. The article is in the Strib by the NY Times, so paywalled.

    is.gd/5HB1Mv

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