Eye On Miami

November 02, 2011

Will Big Sugar derail the Congressional Super Committee?

http://eyeonmiami.blogspot.com/2011/11/will-big-sugar-derail-congressional.html

In a September 23, 2011 letter to the Congressional Super Committee, the Coalition for Sugar Reform pointedly noted, "We are writing because Congress needs to debate sugar policy in a fair and open way. The logical place for this debate to occur is during consideration of the 2012 farm bill." What concerns commerce (including the US Chamber of Commerce) and environmentalists (Everglades Trust) is that Big Sugar, willing to extract the last penny out of the Everglades by shifting the costs of pollution to the backs of taxpayers, is swamping the hallways of Congress again. This time, Big Sugar is lobbying for the farm bill-- reauthorized every five years-- to be pushed into the Congressional Super Committee where an up-or-down vote on measures to reduce the federal deficit by the end of the year could extend their riches. The Coalition calls the sugar subsidy "an implicit food tax" costing consumers at least $4 billion a year and "makes Everglades restoration much more difficult."

What they mean is that Big Sugar, whose most infamous component are the billionaire Fanjuls, spread their sweet campaign contributions across the political landscape, pitting power against common sense and turning a highly managed water supply system into a political ATM machine.

Big Sugar is no ordinary political ATM. For paltry millions a year of political fertilizer, Big Sugar gets whatever it wants, whenever it wants. During the historic drought of last winter -- broken only by unusual rain events this fall-- sugar production was scarcely touched compared to water restrictions endured by millions of South Floridian businesses and residents. In a Palm Beach Post report, "Combined, U.S. Sugar, Florida Crystals Corp., headquartered in West Palm Beach, and the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative, Belle Glade, are forecast to produce 1.63 million tons of sugar, up from 1.43 million tons last season, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said."

Although Big Sugar's political influence wraps up Florida's GOP and Democrats, from lowly county commissioners to Congress and the White House, it is a nagging irritation for conservatives whose political gains are undermined by elected officials they supported yet regularly betray conservative values by voting farm bill after farm bill to maintain systematic, entrenched prerogatives. The sugar subsidy in the US farm bill is the clearest example how conservatives talk-the-talk but can't walk-the-walk.

This year, though, it is not just the Cato Institute and Wall Street Journal who are opposing the continued sugar subsidy that makes billionaires even richer, at the expense of American jobs and the Everglades. Tea Party supporters, too, are rattling the comfortable relationship between Congress and an abusive form of corporate welfare.

On October 27, Americans for Prosperity (funded by the Koch Brothers) wrote the Joint Select Committee, "The powerful agricultural lobby has held the US Congress hostage for too long." One example of its hostage taking: the billionaire Fanjuls were among the biggest financial supporters of the Marco Rubio campaign for US Senate. They were furious with Rubio's opponent, former Florida governor Charlie Crist, who tampered with their well-oiled political machinery through a deal he never passed by them; for the state to acquire significant historic Everglades lands in sugar production owned by their chief competitor, US Sugar. Taking out Crist also joined the Fanjuls to the biggest Rubio supporter: Karl Rove's American Crossroads that "invested $1.9 million in ads (attacking Crist)."

Running at cross-currents to conservative political purposes hasn't failed Big Sugar so far. That is why Fanjul lobbyists are calculating to bump the farm bill into the Congressional Super Committee. There, an up-or-down vote could bury their taxpayer supported riches in a feathered federal budget deal: better odds than to subjecting subsidies to scrutiny in a presidential election year where their exquisite protection racquet could be damaged.

The Coalition writes, "... unless you are confident that the Joint Committee will thoroughly and completely overhaul sugar subsidies, we strongly urge you to defer any action on sugar policy to the 2012 farm bill, and resist any efforts by the sugar lobby to extend their program through your committee's work product." But according to the trade journal AgWeek, "Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., recently spoke to the the American Sugar Alliance via video teleconference and offered an assurance that the debt cieling-reduction bill wouldn’t cut farm subsidies in the short term. If the “Super Committee” doesn’t come up with a deficit reduction proposal by December, however, farm programs will be affected."