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Peterson: ‘Entitlement mentality’ must change

Leaders of the House and Senate ag committees were not able to deliver their farm policy recommendations to the deficit reduction super committee on Friday, as they had planned.

House Ag ranking member Collin Peterson says most of the proposal is done, with four of the five titles—rural development, conservation, nutrition and dairy—basically finished. 

But Peterson says there are still unresolved issues regarding the commodity title.  He says regional differences are still a challenge—as well as what he terms “an entitlement mentality”.

“Where (they say) ‘we have this money and it belongs to us’—we’ve got to get away from that,” Peterson says. “In this climate we can’t justify a program that’s going to pay people when they don’t need it—where it’s going to pay people based on something that they don’t do anymore.  That’s gotten us in a lot of trouble—and we have to get away from it.

“I mean—I want to make sure cotton has got an effective safety net.  I want to make sure peanuts and rice have an effective safety net—as well as wheat and barley and oats and corn and soybeans,” says Peterson. “That’s the goal—not ‘cotton’s got this much money and now, therefore, they should always have that much money’.

“That’s not the way we should look at things.”

Peterson adds that he’s not too concerned about rushing to get the recommendations done, given that the super committee is behind schedule too.