Free Market Focus: Farm Bill Defeat Is a Chance to Get Things Right

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June 26, 2013     |    Discover more at Heritage's Enterprise and Free Markets webpage

Farm Bill Defeat Is a Chance to Get Things Right The House’s rejection of the food stamp/farm bill was a major victory for fiscal responsibility and limited government. Instead of adopting a fundamentally flawed $1 trillion farm bill, the House shot down the legislation by a 195–234 bipartisan vote. Bill proponents have consistently claimed throughout the farm bill debate that “something is better than nothing.” And within minutes of the bill’s defeat, the fear-mongering grew even louder. Representative Frank Lucas (R–OK), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, alleged that the bill was necessary to avoid “farm crises.” The World Isn’t Going to End. Congress needs to take a deep breath. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? >>

U.S. Mortgage Market Reform: Corker-Warner Bill Misguided Draft legislation by Senators Bob Corker (R–TN) and Mark Warner (D–VA) would wind down federally sponsored housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but it suffers from many of the same problems the system faced over the past two decades. The bill would replace the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the current conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, with a new government agency, the Federal Mortgage Insurance Corporation (FMIC). The new FMIC, structured as an independent agency similar to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, would serve as a regulator and guarantor of the secondary mortgage market. FIND OUT MORE >>

Kansas Teachers Vote to Decertify Their Union Teachers in Deerfield, Kansas, just did something unusual—they voted to decertify their union. The Kansas National Education Association (KNEA) no longer represents them. Teachers disliking their union representation do not make news, but teachers actually leaving their union do: The law makes it very difficult for teachers to remove unwanted unions. Unlike most public officials, unions do not stand for re-election, so their members cannot regularly hold them accountable. Workers can remove an unwanted union only by filing for decertification. But bureaucratic obstacles make it difficult to hold a vote on decertification. The hoops Deerfield’s teachers had to jump through illustrate this problem. LEARN THE DETAILS >>

More From Heritage Speaker Boehner: What's "Free Market" About the Farm Bill? Red Tape Rising: Regulation in Obama's First Term

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