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“Those poor school kids didn’t hire the right lobbyist.”

Joshua Foust on May 06 2008 at 10:28 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Economics

Congress is behaving atrociously: cutting assistance to hungry children abroad right when food prices are spiking, and preventing competition amongst our sugar producers. There’s more, of course.

I normally scoff at the talk of “lobbyists” and “special interest groups.” I know several lobbyists, and the only thing that makes them special is they’ve learned how to play the game. And that’s fine to a certain degree—going back at least to the Federalist Papers, the Founding Fathers understood there would be groups passionately arguing their case before Congress. But this is moving well beyond the pale.

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Tags: congress, lobbyists, WTF

One Response to ““Those poor school kids didn’t hire the right lobbyist.””

on 07 May 2008 at 8:22 am 1MichaelW

It’s hard to tell from the WaPo article, but it appears that the money for those kids will simply be coming through a different appropriation:

President Bush last week asked Congress to approve $770 million in new global food aid in the coming fiscal year in response to the spreading crisis. House Democratic leaders may increase that amount and may require that some of the aid be dispensed more quickly.

[...]

House lawmakers blamed the Senate. “There was no support for it there. We ran into a brick wall,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), one of those representing the House in the talks.

Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), leader of the Senate team, responded that because nutrition dollars were limited, “we applied most of the funds to assistance for U.S. families and children, with the expectation that foreign food assistance would continue to be funded primarily through annual appropriations bills, as has long been done.”

I could be wrong, but I think that only $40 Million was carved from the Farm Bill and will have to be accounted for elsewhere.

I’m not much of a fan of either subsidies or foreign aid, but I think one could show that the ridiculous subsidies paid to American farmers (read “ADM“) are closely connected to the reason why foreign aid in the form of food for children is even necessary.