Listen to “Fiscal Conservatives Furious over Farm Bill” on Spreaker.
This week, the Republican House of Representatives and the Republican Senate easily approved a new, five-year Farm Bill, but conservative critics are enraged at the cost and structure of the legislation.
Club for Growth Vice President of Government Affairs Andy Roth says Republicans in Congress barely made any efforts to rein in spending or beef up work requirements for food assistance programs contained in the bill.
Roth says the original House version made some progress in those areas, but any good parts were stripped out in the final version that he expects President Trump to sign.
He says the spending approach was simply irresponsible.
“This was a bill that really didn’t have a score. They just learned about how much it would cost right before the Senate voted. Even then, the scorekeepers at the Congressional Budget Office said they still weren’t done counting. So Congress rushed this bill through, in a lame duck Congress mind you, without even knowing the full ramifications of the bill,” said Roth.
“Lawmakers in Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, were more beholden to special interests than to taxpayers,” said Roth.
Listen to the full podcast to hear why Roth thinks the Farm Bill is a relic of the Dust Bowl era that’s no longer necessary, how the new Farm Bill is worse than the last one, and why the subsidies will go to big agribusinesses that don’t need them while small family farmers often get the shaft.
