Today, the Senate is scheduled to consider S. 388, the American Family Economic Protection Act of 2013. This is the Senate Democratic alternative to avoid across the board sequestration cuts set to strike at midnight. While the bill is intended to reduce the deficit, its provisions dealing with agricultural subsidies fail to save taxpayers any money. Let’s face it, the bill isn’t about protecting families, but rather, big agribusiness. While the bill claims to finally eliminate the outdated direct payment program that pays people to own land that used to be farmed (whether it is now or not), it squanders these savings on other wasteful subsidies and exempting agriculture from future sequestration cuts.

But as is often the case in the budget world, things are not all as they seem. So let’s do the math. The direct payment program costs taxpayers $5 billion per year, or $50 billion over ten years, so why does S. 388 only save $21.7 billion? Primarily because another subsidy program – the Average Crop Revenue Election (ACRE) program – is not eliminated alongside direct payments. Basically, farmers were able to pick to either get direct payments or participate in a “shallow loss” income guarantee program (ACRE), but almost all of them elected for direct payments because it was more generous. If direct payments were eliminated, agribusinesses would run to the other subsidy program – so that sucking sound you heard is almost $20 billion in savings going out the window.

Okay, so now we’re down to $30 billion in savings. Where did the other $9 go? Roughly $3 billion went to restore some disaster funding. Now we’re down to the last $6 billion that’s missing from the original $50 billion from eliminating direct payments. That’s the biggest insult. We lose $6 billion in deficit reduction because the Farm Bill agriculture programs are exempted from future sequestration cuts! A lot of the Farm Bill already was, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps) and Crop Insurance subsidies (incredibly), for instance. This bill would protect farm subsidies from future sequestration cuts, while preserving it on all the things the Administration is decrying: research, Pentagon, teachers, first responders, you name it. This comes after a year where despite the drought, farm country has had near record profits, record high crop and land prices, and record crop insurance payments costing taxpayers in excess of $14 billion! If anyone could afford the cut it’s Big Ag!

So let’s review: the 2012 Ryan budget proposed $30 billion in cuts to agriculture; the President proposed even more – $32 billion – in his 2012 budget; the 2012 House Farm Bill would have resulted in $35 billion in deficit reduction; and even the 2012 Senate Farm Bill would have reduced the deficit by $23.1 billion. But we now we are going to settle for a measly $21.7 billion in the 2013 Senate Democrats’ sequester avoidance bill? Pitiful. These “savings” would be wiped out by higher than expected crop insurance costs possibly even before this Congress is over. Worse yet, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) is reporting that the Ag Committees will have to find ZERO savings if they write a new farm bill this year. This is a dismal plan for deficit reduction.

If any sector can bear deficit reduction right now, it’s agriculture. While every other agency falls deeper into sequestration, crop prices and farmer income continue to skyrocket. However, Agriculture Committees have been unwilling to do their fair share. Most farmers are willing take full cuts to direct payments to save taxpayers $50 billion. Will the Agriculture Committees listen to their constituencies and step up to the plate?