Farm & Food File: ‘But Americans voted for change’

You can kill houseflies with a shotgun, but that’s best done outdoors and away from people. Of course, drawing a bead on the indoor pests outdoors defeats the purpose of going after the little buggers in the first place.

The youthful, shotgun-toting bros at DOGE, the White House-backed, Elon Musk-led crusaders against government “waste, fraud and abuse,” seem to have not learned that simple lesson; they’re firing at will and hitting very little.

For example, by their own accounting, DOGE claimed in late February to have found and rooted out $55 billion in wasteful spending. When independent auditors did the math, however, they found actual savings closer to $7 billion, or 87% less than DOGErs claimed.

The savings, a windfall by any definition, appear to be less important than the agency purges it’s fueled.

In the first month of DOGEtocracy, for example, two agencies all but ceased to exist, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The loss of USAID — whether you cheered or jeered its existence — will affect all American farmers. Eighty percent of its nearly $60 billion annual budget was spent in the United States and, in the last year numbers were made public, $1.2 billion of it went to purchase U.S. farm goods at the local level.

Still, USAID critics like Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst tagged it corrupt. In an early February post on social media, the Hawkeye Republican noted that “USAID dollars have gone into the pockets of fat cats around the world.”

Since 40% of the world’s billionaires live in the United States, it’s a safe bet that some — if not many — of the overweight cats Ernst claims are lapping up USAID gravy are American.

We do know that researchers at Kansas State University have found that every USAID dollar invested in the United States — for jobs, infrastructure, commodity purchases, packaging, shipping — shows “a return of $8.52.”

That means the $1.2 billion of USAID cash spent recently to buy American-grown “food aid” had an overall impact on the U.S. economy of $10.2 billion.

So, in fact, what’s getting fat on U.S. aid dollars is the American economy. Equally true is that taking USAID spending out of rural America will deliver a skinnier farm economy.

So, too, with two other favorite stalking horses of budget-cutters, Medicaid and SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Both face multibillion-dollar cuts as Republicans in Congress ratchet up their search for spending “fat” to underwrite the estimated $4.5-trillion-dollar tax cuts both they and the White House want.

While no one yet knows how deeply those programs could be cut, we do know that any cuts to either program will have deep, lasting consequences for rural Americans.

For example, more “small town” and “rural” residents — 15% and 16%, respectively — receive SNAP benefits than “metro” dwellers, at 13%.

Likewise, according to the U.S. Census, 47% of all children and 18% of all adults in “small towns and rural America” receive health insurance coverage through Medicaid and CHIPs, the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

By contrast, 40% of the children and 15% of adults in “urban” America receive Medicaid and CHIPs coverage.

Cutting people from either group or either program or putting new curbs on current coverage might save more money, but it won’t save more lives — especially in rural America.

But, say GOP defenders of the White House plans, “Americans voted for change.” True enough.

But no one voted for more hungry Americans, more sick and uncared for Americans and a more weakened rural America.