Another Government Money Pit

H.R.5832 : To establish the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, to provide funding for the support of fundamental agricultural research of the highest quality, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Rep Gutknecht, Gil [MN-1] (introduced 7/19/2006)
Cosponsors: (4)
Committees: House Agriculture
Latest Major Action: 8/7/2006 House committee/subcommittee actions.
Status: Executive Comment Requested from USDA.

I am surprised this bill is not sponsored by Richard Pombo, nor is he a co-sponsor. The Republican Representative from Tracy, California bragged on May 11, 2006 about acquiring grant money for farmers to help keep our grape, cherry, walnut, and all fruit and vegetable farmers competitive globally. The grant is called the "Specialty Crops Block Grant" program. Maybe he was busy visiting our national parks in his government-subsidized RV rental with his family and couldn't be bothered.

Maybe the problem with this bill is, it doesn't give the money directly to agricultural businesses (corporate welfare) but instead, presumes to take over a part of their business... the R&D side. Maybe he realizes that the best people to conduct research into agriculture are, well, the people who stand to profit if the research is conducted in the best possible way. Maybe he realizes just how inefficient the government is at conducting lofty-sounding research. I doubt it.

Bills like this list findings that are supposed to support the reasoning behind getting the government involved in whatever the bill proposes. Here are the bullet points that supposedly create the need for a new government agency...

(A) agriculture in the United States faces critical challenges, including
impending crises in the food, agricultural, and natural resource systems of the
United States;
(B) exotic diseases and pests threaten crops and livestock;
(C) obesity has reached epidemic proportions;
(D) agriculturally related
environmental degradation is a serious problem for the United States and other
parts of the world;
(E) certain animal diseases threaten human health; and
(F) agricultural producers of several primary crops in the United States are
no longer the world's lowest-cost producers.

I challenge anyone to tell me why any of these findings a) are problems or goals best handled by the government or b) are not already the responsibility of another agency.

Specifically, the disease portions of these findings (B, C (arguable) and E) could be handled by the Centers on Disease Control (CDC.) It also seems to me that we have a huge agency called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is supposed to handle environmental concerns ("Environmental" is right in their name) which would presumably be responsible for item D.

That leaves A and F. Item A is incredibly general and item F is a problem for the business owners to work on. It should be added that the "lowest-cost" declaration is not substantiated with any numbers. It doesn't say if it takes subsidies into consideration or any other factor that might skew the results outside of what one would call free trade.

Oh, and did I mention there were only four items of activity on the Thomas website from yesterday's session. It is pretty sad when I can pick out an awfulaw winner from only four possible items. Sadder still is the fact that there was another one in the running.