Bummer crop: 'Freedom to Farm' meets the tyranny of the status quo.

• Author: Henderson, Rick

"Freedom to Farm" meets the tyranny of the status quo.

Rep. Dick Armey of Texas, now the House Majority Leader, once called American farm policy "Moscow on the Mississippi." But as the 104th Congress rewrites the farm bill, perestroika on the Potomac doesn't look too likely.

The GOP's attempt to reform farm policy may become an example of what Milton and Rose Friedman called "the tyranny of the status quo" - the difficulty of making radical changes in a democracy. Although the Republicans are so far sticking to their promises to cut subsidies, a combination of interest-group politics and institutional inertia threatens to block more fundamental reforms.

That didn't have to be the case. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, an affable Kansan, began the term as an unapologetic defender of existing farm programs. That changed after the House leadership started making noises about disbanding the Agriculture Committee. Facing the threat of extinction, Roberts convinced GOP leaders to keep the committee. He argued that only he had the expertise to craft reforms to provide an orderly transition to the free market.

Roberts kept his word: His Freedom to Farm Act not only met the Republicans' mandate to cut $13.4 billion from projected subsidies over the next seven years, it also swept away much of a regulatory system so arcane and esoteric that Armey once called its advocates "esoterrorists." The plan, which had the blessing of Armey and the Republican leaders, even prompted the previously skeptical Wall Street Journal editorial page to declare, "the Kansan has joined the revolution."

Under Freedom to Farm, subsidies would drop from $10 billion now to $6 billion next year to $4.3 billion in 2002. The bill would phase out most farm loan guarantees, price supports, and property set-asides. Rather than basing subsidies on the number of acres planted (or kept out of production) or the amount of crops harvested, the bill would offer existing farmers fixed but declining payments. Meanwhile, farmers could plant any crop in any quantity. Or nothing at all.

The regulatory changes would be even more significant than the money saved. Take cotton, which the General Accounting Office says cost taxpayers $1.5 billion in subsidies in 1993.

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