Iowa’s stake in the budget

The Trump Administration’s budget framework passed this week by the US House would have deep implications for Iowa in its bid to slash spending by $2 trillion while extending and enhancing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans (few of whom live in the Tall Corn State). It demands deep cuts to Medicaid especially, and to Medicare. It also will starve nutrition and conservation programs in the farm bill, yet to be negotiated.

The budget would demand at least $880 billion cuts in health services for the poor and elderly. Iowa is old and getting poorer with every session of the legislature. Health care providers in Northwest Iowa draw the bulk of their income from Medicaid and Medicare. That’s why so many nursing homes — including in Storm Lake, Newell and Albert City — had to close under the Reynolds Medicaid privatization. It is an abomination.

Piling the Trump cuts on top will make things even worse for the poor and elderly (now thought of in Washington as “pariahs”).

We love Medicare. Everyone should have it. It saves money. You can go in to the hospital knowing that you won’t lose your house to it as you would under a private health insurance plan. It is the most popular government program. Demons in the Capitol are telling the politicians to gut Medicare. It would be political insanity. Yet they persist.

Back to the farm: To come up with $2 trillion in spending reductions, there will be major changes in the farm bill. Again, the most popular programs will get starved or eliminated, like the Conservation Stewardship Program that helps farmers use sustainable techniques profitably, or similarly the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). Both these programs are oversubscribed, so popular not everyone can get in. These are programs that directly help farmers on working lands. The Conservation Reserve Program could be a goner. So what, so long as you strengthen crop insurance and lift target prices on the commodity crops?

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said her immediate priorities are dealing with bird flu and protecting farmers from the impact of tariffs. They dealt with bird flu by firing bird flu workers and then begging them to come back to work. We suppose they will buy off farmers with disaster payments as Trump did before, using the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation as his piggy bank. All those ag resiliency programs previously financed by the CCC under Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack are getting fed into the manure digester. Farmers who committed to it, tough luck.

Trump says he isn’t hearing anything from farmers about filching on a cover crop payment. Yet. If they do not get paid, Trump will hear about it. Which is why the farm bill will gut spending on food stamps and school nutrition programs, and direct all spending to ag producers and corporations. Not even Trump can filch on a payment promise to the agricultural industrial complex. He knows. The farm bill will take care of them in a different revenue stream that has nothing to do with the “climate hoax”.

Conservationists are being fired. Small-time producers will get stiffed on previous government commitments. That is the point: You cannot trust the government to help you against the weather and the markets. Destroy USDA credibility. The rivers will run toxic as they are and feed the demise of the Gulf of Whatever. Fewer farms will dot our landscape. The kill line will run faster with fewer USDA inspectors. Rural families disproportionately depend on government nutrition programs. You won’t hear from them, either, because they don’t matter.

That’s what this budget means for Iowa. We’re getting the short end, again.