Sun Sentinel
November 21,
2011
As super committee fails to reach deal, here are winners and losers in
Florida
Big Sugar,
defense contractors, Social Security recipients and most workers had much at
stake
By William E. Gibson
WASHINGTON —
A congressional super committee's failure to agree on a debt-reduction plan
Monday disappointed sugar growers and alarmed defense contractors in Florida
while bringing a sense of relief to proponents of Social Security and Medicare.
Big Sugar,
rooted in Palm Beach County, had hoped the committee would renew a program that
artificially raises consumer prices while propping up a $3.3 billion industry
in Florida with more than 12,000 jobs.
Defense
contractors had hoped the committee would spare the Pentagon deep automatic
cutbacks that likely will pinch Central Florida's aerospace industry and a wide
range of small businesses in South Florida.
Those hopes
will remain frustrated unless Congress takes action. "The main impact is a
loss of trust and confidence that the American people have in Congress, when we
can't even sit down over the course of a 90-day period and come up with a plan
to reduce this deficit," said U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Plantation.
Here's how
the super committee collapse affected key stakeholders in Florida:
Sugar
Sugar
interests wanted the committee to accept a farm package that included renewal
of a price-support program that limits foreign imports to maintain higher sugar
prices. Renewal would keep the industry alive for at least another five years.
Now sugar
companies will have to hope that Congress passes a farm bill next year that
would include the price supports, due to expire in 2013. Finding agreement on
this or any controversial bill has proven nearly impossible in this polarized
Congress.
An end to
price supports "would be disastrous," said Phillip Hayes of the
American Sugar Alliance. "You would see subsidized imports flowing into
the United States and driving U.S. producers out of business."
"When
you depend on foreign sugar you are going to have to ride the roller-coaster which
is the world sugar market."
But critics
of the program welcome a full debate in Congress.
"It costs a lot more jobs than it saves," said Slade O'Brien of Boca Raton, Florida director of Americans for Prosperity, a grass-roots group that wants to limit government. "Higher prices mean a lot of manufacturers have to go overseas to find cheaper sugar, taking away our jobs, then import candy back to this country."
For some in
the tea party movement, the sugar program is an example of how the government
wrongly picks winners and losers in the marketplace.