From Politico:
"At issue is the estimated $15 billion to $20 billion the government spends in subsidies each year. Originally a Depression-era program, farm subsidies have evolved into a complex maze of economic assurances for farmers: direct payments, federal crop insurance programs, counter-cyclical payments (which trigger when commodity prices fall below a certain mandated level) and other programs. "
From ERS: total payments have been below $13 billion for the last 5 years.
[Update: It should have been obvious from my quote she was including crop insurance as a subsidy. So: I was wrong and she was right.
I emailed her complaining, she responded immediately, very nicely, and I got off my duff and checked the CBO estimates. Essentially they've upped their estimate from $16.7 to 17.3 billion because increased crop insurance costs offset the decrease in counter-cyclical payments. ]
No comments:
Post a Comment