Commentary: Rep. Nancy Mace Champions Legislation to Protect Family Farmers and Rein in Swampy Government Slush Funds

Rep. Mace with Irby

By: Marty Irby, COO of FreedomWorks

The past few years have been brutal for family farmers, but most folks don’t really understand the root of the problem, and it’s not necessarily just inflation, supply chain problems, or the current state of our crippled economy in 2023.

It’s one of the swampiest open secrets in Washington — the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) Commodity Checkoff Programs for beef, pork, dairy, and other commodities. Under these programs, struggling farmers are forced to hand over part of their income to line the coffers of these embattled government slush funds.

It’s the worst kind of taxation – one where the payer gets nothing in return. Major trade associations like Dairy Management, Inc., divert checkoff dollars that by law are restricted to commodity marketing programs and research, and instead use a large portion of the money to lobby against the interests of those it purports to represent.

As one investigative report noted in 2018, dairy checkoff funds spent by Dairy Management, Inc. on the “Got Milk?” campaign “didn’t sell more milk. In fact, per-capita fluid milk consumption dropped 24 percent between the time ‘Got Milk?’ launched in 1993 and was dropped in 2014, according to USDA data.”

Another by investigative report by Politico noted that it had been “four years since the USDA published legally required annual financial reports on a $400 million dairy research and promotional fund” under the leadership of President Barack Obama’s U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Vilsack joined Dairy Management, Inc. just days after leaving office garnering a salary of more than $800,000 per year. And with Joe Biden returning Vilsack to the same post, concerns about Vilsack‘s potential conflicts of interest have outraged farmers across America.

But there is hope with the introduction of the bipartisan, bicameral Opportunities for Fairness in Farming (OFF) Act, H.R. 1249/S. 557, led by Reps. Nancy Mace, R-Mt. Pleasant, and Dina Titus, D-Nev., in the U.S. House and Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Rand Paul, R-Ky., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in the Senate, that will bring transparency and accountability to these runaway checkoffs.

The OFF Act doesn’t seek to abolish the checkoff programs, as beneficiaries are misrepresenting, but would instead simply require transparency and accountability. It would prohibit checkoff funds from being used for lobbying. The legislation also would prohibit funds from being used to pay for staff and programs of trade associations that favor multinational corporations and push independent farmers out of business. And it would prevent disparagement of one product over another, because allowing the federal government to pick winners and losers in the marketplace is unacceptable.

Right now, funds from checkoff programs benefit industry groups that promote frightening levels of market consolidation and anticompetitive practices in production agriculture, and that does nothing to help the family farmers forced to pay into the program.

For example, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and the beef checkoff pushed for the dissolution of programs designed to prevent price-fixing at the packing houses. Producers are thus forced to accept prices imposed by the global meat cartels, such as JBS from Brazil and Smithfield from China, that make it impossible to compete with cheaper, suspect products from overseas. American producers and consumers alike should be outraged that the NCBA, a U.S.-based beef industry group, is doing the bidding of giant multinational corporations instead of hard-working American farmers and ranchers. NCBA also does the bidding of those same foreign corporations in opposing rules to let consumers know where their meat was raised and processed. As a result of their nefarious efforts, the beef labeled as “Made in the USA” may have been produced in South America or other third world countries and merely slapped on a Styrofoam tray and packaged with saran wrap.

The effort for checkoff reform is supported by more than 80 farm organizations, including the Organization for Competitive Markets, the National Farmers Union, and R-CALF, representing over 250,000 family farmers and ranchers, alongside groups like FreedomWorks, the Heritage Foundation, R Street, and the National Taxpayers Union.

Supporters of the bill are calling on Congress to take aim at these broken and corrupt programs and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott should step up and support their colleagues in the Senate and Rep. Mace by cosponsoring S. 557.

As Rep. Mace said: “Anyone who opposes this legislation makes you wonder what they might actually have to hide.” House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., John Boozman, R-Ark., Glenn Thompson, R-Penn., and David Scott, D-Ga., should include the OFF Act in the upcoming Farm Bill and support the American family farmers calling for reform.

Marty Irby is the chief operating officer at FreedomWorks in Washington, D.C., and board secretary at the Organization for Competitive Markets in Lincoln, Nebraska.

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