Congressional Conflict of Interest
It looks like farm subsidy reform is unlikely for another few years. Senator Blanche Lincoln has been selected the new head of the Senate Agriculture Committee. Dow Jones notes: “Lincoln is a two-term moderate Democrat who described herself Wednesday as a ‘farmer’s daughter.’”
Lincoln has been “a tireless advocate for the Arkansas rice industry” and a “champion for agriculture.” You can see what 20 or so other agriculture lobby groups say about Lincoln here. These are very laudatory remarks, but what about the taxpayers? What do taxpayers think about her support for the $20 billion or so in annual giveaways to farmers?
I’m guessing that Lincoln will put the interests of subsidy-receiving farmers in her state ahead of the interests of the nation’s taxpayers, given that Arkansas ranks seventh out of the 50 states in terms of farm subsidies received yet has a small population.
This sort of pro-spending bias on committees is common across Congress of course. I’ve argued that one step toward getting the House and Senate to make to more rational and frugal trade-offs on spending would be mandatory random committee assignments every two years. It’s absurd that generally the only people overseeing farm programs are people who are in the bag for farmers. It’s an obvious conflict of interest.
It would be much better if we had one of the senators from, say, Rhode Island chairing the Agriculture Committee, because that state receives less farm subsidies than any other. A Rhode Island senator would be more likely to dispassionately balance the trade-offs of the $20 billion or so of pain imposed by taxes to support farm subsidies with the benefits of farm subsidies (if any).
Filed under: Government and Politics; Trade and Immigration
The Stimulating Story of Dr. Robert Felner
In 2003, after a stint heading up the school of education at the University of Rhode Island, Dr. Robert Felner took the same job at the University of Louisville. Two years later, he secured an earmarked federal government grant for $694,000 from the Dept. of Education, ostensibly for a vast study of Kentucky public school performance. According to federal investigators, the money ended up in Dr. Felner’s pockets instead. In fact, investigators allege that Felner and a partner in crime managed to defraud taxpayers of $2.3 million by promising to deliver educational assessment services that never materialized.
The checks and balances you might expect to have stopped this from happening were seldom checked and never balanced. And that’s what’s so stimulating about this story: Felner allegedly duped everyone involved for nearly 3 years — at a time when the $100 billion federal education stimulus package wasn’t yet a twinkle in president Obama’s eye.
Given that officials couldn’t stay on top of millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money under normal circumstances, it’s unsettling to think what is going on right now as the system is suddenly flooded with billions of new dollars.
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