Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash

The federal budget is not only about money, but fundamentally about our country’s morality—our commitment to fairness, equality and unity.

Which brings me to, of all things, our nation’s Farm Bill. This sprawling piece of legislation, updated every five years, is intended to combine the interests of farmers with consumers, production with conservation, grassroots cultures with corporate systems… etc. It’s not easy. In fact, downright messy.

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But now, with plutocratic ideologues and culture warriors dominating their caucus, Republican lawmakers have not even been able to produce an agreement among themselves, so the comprehensive farm bill America needs is a year overdue and no longer being pursued by the party in charge. Instead, the GOP’s ag committee chairman, Rep. Glenn Thompson, is jerry-rigging a stripped-down sham of a bill limited to the two spending priorities of MAGA Republicans:

One: Hand out many billions more of our taxpayers’ dollars to subsidize agribusiness giants and rich speculators who own the biggest farms, mainly because they’ll then keep funding and voting for Republicans.

Two: Whack America’s poorest families. Thompson is banking on the minginess of extremist Republicans who oppose the Ag Department’s hunger programs. Those programs help 40 million poverty-stricken Americans (including 1 in 5 children) afford the groceries they need.

So, there we have the GOP’s farm bill ethics—cut the poor to give more to the rich in order to buy votes for more of the same. The word for this is “corrupt.” Also, “cruel.”

Indeed, it takes an exceptional level of political shamelessness to steal food from the hungry in order to fatten some of the richest people in our country. To fight their depravity, go to ruralorganizing.org.

Do something!

The House GOP leadership has been making noises that they’re looking at the House Ag Committee’s meeting on May 8 for the Farm Bill’s reconciliation markup. You can help put pressure on the committee itself by contacting its members, and demanding that your own representatives support small family famers and the programs our most vulnerable communities depend on.

There’s also a great tool from The Democracy Labs showing where kids will go hungry and farmers will be bankrupted: check out the MAGA HUNGER MAP and use it to call your representative.

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