Industry interest groups have spent more than $400 million lobbying lawmakers on the 2024 farm bill, according to a recent report from the Union for Concerned Scientists. It should be no surprise, then, that the legislation unveiled by House Republicans last week is taking flak from taxpayer watchdogs across the political spectrum as a corporate-sponsored boondoggle.
On Tuesday, policy experts from the Heritage Foundation, National Taxpayers Union, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the Environmental Working Group held a joint press conference to trash the $1.5 trillion bill as a government giveaway to favored special interests. For all the fanfare made of Boeing and Northrop Grumman cashing in on overseas conflicts to inflate their domestic influence, agribusiness has already spent nearly 20 percent more than the defense industry this year to capture favors from Washington power brokers.
Josh Sewell, the director of Research and Policy at Taxpayers for Common Sense, blasted the GOP farm bill for including tens of billions of dollars in new subsidies for agricultural special interests.
“Drastically increasing government-enforced minimum crop prices to a level that guarantees payments for many of these crops is an exercise to grab more cash, regardless of need,” Sewell said. “More subsidies are not needed, especially as 70 percent of farmers don’t even grow a commodity eligible.”
An analysis from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) earlier this month found around 10,000 repeat recipients of farm subsidies or disaster relief payments collecting more than $11 billion over 39 years. Farmers remain eligible to
