An unfair law

President Obama has said that fighting economic inequality is one of his priorities. He is contradicting this statement by supporting a new farm law that punishes the poor while ensuring huge subsidies for agribusiness.

Today the president will sign a long-debated bill that ended up with smaller cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In the end, $8.6 billion in 10 years is twice what the Senate wanted, but much less than the $40 billion that the House of Representatives proposed.

The problem is that, while the amount of monetary assistance for children and retirees, in addition to the unemployed, is decreasing, corporate subsidies are increasing.

It is a shame that they continue increasing SNAP cuts that began last November under the argument of lowering the deficit and fraud, when in reality this fraud is estimated to be 1.3%, a number lower than in the bank sector or Congress itself.

In the meanwhile, the new law creates two programs to guarantee farmers that their revenues will never fall below 86% of what they earned in their best year. It is estimated that 75% of these subsidies go to 10% of the country’s largest agricultural conglomerates.

Under this law, the poorest must prove that they need the hundreds of dollars per month that they get from SNAP; on the other hand, companies and farmers can have annual revenues of up to $900,000 and still get payments. In fact, they do not have to prove any damages or necessity in order to receive federal funds.

This law is an example of how economic inequality has grown, hurting the social safety net while more public funds are channeled to guarantee revenues to the corporate and private sectors.

The economy has not recovered for millions of unemployed. However, Washington is more concerned about ensuring multi-million dollar revenues for agribusiness than about making sure that the unemployed have food on the table.