Washington, D.C. - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today named all 18 members of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management Porkers of the Month for rejecting every credible proposal for reform of farm subsidy programs, and instead unanimously voting to extend the current archaic, costly, and wasteful system.

In a statement regarding the decision, Subcommittee Ranking Member Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) said, “I believe the work of the Subcommittee today was a step in the right direction.  The work we accomplished today reinstituted the safety net of the previous Farm Bill that many producers are comfortable with.”  Subcommittee member Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) suggested that his Agriculture Committee colleagues "circle the wagons" against reforms to the current system.

Of course the farm lobby and subcommittee members are content with a continuation of the most expensive farm subsidy payments in history, which has cost taxpayers an average of $20 billion annually for the last five years.  Farm income is soaring along with land values, so only in Washington does it make sense to give farmers more handouts at the taxpayers’ expense.  Payments in the districts of the 18 subcommittee members totaled $10 billion from 2003-2005, according to the Environmental Working Group. 

Although a primary justification for continuing the failed agriculture policies of the past 70 years has always been that they are essential to protecting “small family farmers,” subsidies overwhelmingly go to the largest farmers and agribusinesses.  In 2003, the top 10 percent of farm subsidy recipients collected 72 percent of total subsidies and the top 5 percent collected 55 percent of payments.  Many of these farmers have net worths exceeding $2 million.

Farm subsidy programs actually hurt small family farms by driving up land prices and encouraging farm consolidation, which drives small farmers out of business.  A June 20 Washington Post article documented this phenomenon in the Mississippi Delta, where 95 percent of the more than $1 billion for the region went to large, commercial farms between 2001-2005. 

Agriculture subsidies also raise prices for consumers, encourage farming on environmentally-sensitive land, undercut subsistence farmers in developing countries, and invite retaliatory tariffs that hurt U.S. producers of non-subsidized commodities.  The farm program is simply a massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers and consumers to the wealthy, politically-connected producers of a handful of crops.

For failing to move farm programs into the twenty-first century, ignoring free-market reforms, subverting trade agreements, and hurting those they claim to want to protect, CAGW names all 18 members of the Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management its June 2007 Porkers of the Month.

Citizens Against Government Waste is the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.  Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.