A Senate Republican committee leader today blamed an ongoing global food crisis on “decades of misguided environmental and energy policies.”
James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said worldwide access to food is declining and prices are skyrocketing because of meddling politicians bureaucrats in Washington who have been afraid of expanding energy supplies.
Current policy that has led to the consumption of more corn as ethanol-based fuel rather than as food “has skewed common sense and has violated the principles of a sound energy policy,” Inhofe said on the Senate floor.
He urged Congress to revisit its December 2007 biofuel mandate and admit that it made a mistake by implementing it, and he said the Environmental Protection Agency should review its statutory options to relieve the impact of the mandate.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a message about how farm subsidies harm consumers, taxpayers and the poor: “U.S. farmers are lobbying for even more at a time when farm income is at an all-time high. And the agriculture lobbyists may get their extra pork in the 2007 farm bill if the senators match the plan adopted by their colleagues in the House of Representatives.”
CEI said the bill would cost taxpayers $286 billion over 10 years.
President Bush moved this week to fill two slots in his Cabinet by nominating people to be secretaries of Agriculture and Veterans Affairs. He picked Ed Shafer today to head Agriculture and announced James Peake as his VA nominee two days earlier.
Bush on Shafer: “He was a leader on agricultural issues during his eight years as the governor of North Dakota. He worked to open new markets for North Dakota farmers and ranchers by expanding trade with China. He oversaw the development of the state’s agricultural biofuels industry. He helped families recover from natural disasters — including drought, fires and floods. And he pioneered innovative programs to increase economic opportunity in rural communities.”
And on Peake: “As a medical officer and combat vet who was wounded in action, Dr. Peake understands the view from both sides of the hospital bed — the doctor’s, and the patient’s. He brought that understanding to many jobs. These jobs include command surgeon in the Army hospitals, commanding general of the largest medical training facility in the world, and Army Surgeon General — where he commanded more than 50,000 medical personnel, oversaw 16 hospitals across the world, and managed an operating budget of nearly $5 billion.”
Job creation and exports growth are going strong in the U.S. economy and new trade deals will make things even better, President Bush said today in an appeal for implementation of pending deals with the Latin American countries of Colombia, Panama and Peru.
“These three agreements will expand America’s access to 75 million customers,” Bush said in his weekly radio address. “These 75 million customers are the equivalent of the populations of California, Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, and Massachusetts combined.”
Here are the benefits that he said each deal offer the United States:
Colombia: “The free trade agreement with Colombia would immediately eliminate tariffs on more than 80 percent of American industrial and consumer exports. It would provide significant new duty-free access for American crops.”
Panama: “This agreement will immediately eliminate tariffs on 88 percent of our industrial and consumer goods exports to Panama. It will increase access for American farmers and ranchers. And it will open opportunities for American businesses to participate in the multi-billion dollar project to expand the Panama Canal. “
Peru: “The free trade agreement would immediately eliminate most of Peru’s industrial tariffs, as well as many of its barriers to U.S. agriculture exports.”
With federal farm programs facing reauthorization in 2008, the Cato Institute is making the case that “agricultural policy in the United States is interventionist, expensive, inequitable, and damaging to American interests abroad.”
Cato’s proposal is “that the government buy out the damaging and expensive support for farmers by paying them a fixed amount of money, which they would be free to spend as they wish. Although it would require large upfront outlays, a politically expedient buyout of agricultural subsidies and trade barriers, with concrete steps to ensure the changes are permanent, would be a worthwhile investment. The 2007 farm bill provides an opportunity for less government interference with rural America.”
Subscribe to RSS