Weekly Video Address
Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014
Video can be found here.
The farm and nutrition bill has yet to be finalized. It's my understanding that a few issues have yet to be resolved, including my provisions to define a farmer and place a hard cap of $250,000 on the amount of farm payments that any one farm can receive.
It's odd that these provisions are in dispute. The payment limits and definition of a farmer provisions were fully debated by both the House and the Senate. There should be a "do not touch" stamp on this portion of the bill. My position is a majority position of both houses. Things that are the same in both bills shouldn't be subject to conferring.
It's simple. Currently, only 10 percent of the wealthiest farmers are getting nearly 70 percent of the benefits of the farm program. To make matters worse, some people are exploiting a loophole that allows multiple people to claim they are "managers" of a farm to collect farm payments. This is particularly absurd because many of these so called managers have little or nothing to do with the farms they get payments for. These non-farmer managers are taking taxpayers for a ride. That's not how the farm program was intended to function.
I'm working to get the farm program back to its original intent - to help small- and medium-sized farms get through the tough times.
This bill is supposed to be about reform. Reform of the food stamp program and reform of the farm payment program. Unfortunately, the members of Congress who are advocating to close loopholes for food stamps, are also advocating to leave open loopholes for the biggest farmers to exploit taxpayers. It's the wrong way to do business.
