Well, if you've got a magic secret bullet for derailing the farm lobby, please get down to the Republican Congressional leadership's offices pronto and help them stop the vile travesty of a farm bill that's about to be passed.
Short of that, it's really hard--nearly impossible--to alter programs in such a way as to take away benefits from a key constituency.
So I propose a two step program for reforming WIC:
1) Build a new program that actually does something useful. Let it accumulate bureaucratic power, hopefully under another agency than the USDA.
2) Have it assimilate WIC. It's well known that a bureaucracy can only be killed by another, more powerful bureaucracy.
But I doubt WIC itself will ever be any good. It's been thoroughly captured by the farm lobby.
A program called "women and infant children" simply cannot be killed. You might as well ask an elected official to sponsor a bill purchasing methamphetamines for babies.
You might as well ask an elected official to sponsor a bill purchasing methamphetamines for babies.
Well, we do subsidize Ritalin...
Megan is right. The only way to get rid of a big program is to turn it into something else, over time.
I support a seemingly unrelated bill that eliminates subsidies to all "environmentally unsustainable" industries with a 10 year phase in.
The left supports it for green reasons. The economic right supports it for elimination of subsidy reasons. So it gets in, and at first only applies to tobacco and seal clubbing.
But over time, the officials make lots of tiny decisions, each one including one more aspect of something as being "environmentally unsustainable", and we all know that eventually the green tending people who would work in such areas would end up classifying ALL industries as such.
Well, of course, the biggest single help that the Republican congressional leadership could have in defeating the farm bill would be majority status. But Ms. McArdle was almost as hot to turn the Republicans into a minority as she was to put Mugabe in charge of Zimbabwe, long ago.
There's a concept called learning to live with the consequences of your actions. It's part of a broader concept called maturity.
y81-
Well, of course, the biggest single help that the Republican congressional leadership could have in defeating the farm bill would be majority status.
How much did farm subsidies decline between 2000-2006 when the "Republicans" controlled both Houses of Congress and the Presidency?
My last vote for a Republican Pres. was 1984. (88-NOTA, 92-Marrou, 96 and 2000-Browne, 04-NOTA)
My current "Republican" Sen. is G. Voinovich and my current "Republican" Rep. is Deb Pryce-- Which of these politicians should I expect to take a stand against farm subsidies?
There's a concept called learning to live with the consequences of your actions. It's part of a broader concept called maturity.
Then I'm sure that the Repubs understand why they lost my vote...
How does this post relate to the title? If the Farm Lobby really is this intent on maintaining the subsidies that exist as part of WIC, won't they fight just as hard against abolition as they will reform? If the goal of WIC is a politically agreed upon outcome, wouldn't it make sense to reform the program (as described in the post perhaps) rather than scrap it?