Behind typical estimates of the price of the National Milk Producers Federation’s Foundation for the Future dairy policy proposal are large and unintended additional taxpayer costs, reductions in the effectiveness of federal nutrition programmes, and reduced access to the programmes for low-income women and children.
The study, commissioned by the International Dairy Foods Association and conducted by a PhD economist at M+R Strategic Services, found that, had the programme been in place in 2009, more than 178,000 qualifying participants would have lost access to the already strained Women, Infants and Children (WIC) programme, unless $92m more in spending was appropriated.
The proposals would also have affected USDA’s donation programmes for food banks and senior centres. An estimated 50m fewer pounds of cheese would have been available to the commodity distribution programmes had the policies been in place in 2009.
“With one in six Americans currently living in poverty, we need a cost-effective federal safety net more than ever,” said Connie Tipton, president and CEO of IDFA. “This report shows that Foundation for the Future and Rep Collin Peterson’s proposal would impose unnecessary hidden costs on taxpayers and would significantly reduce our nation’s ability to help those who are most in need.”
Using the Food and Agricultural Research Policy Institute (FAPRI) analysis of the Dairy Market Stabilization Program and the NMPF estimate of the effect of its proposed changes to Federal Milk Marketing Orders on (beverage) milk prices, the report found that the hidden costs of the proposal’s price increases on the federal nutrition assistance programmes and their beneficiaries would have totalled $655m in 2009 alone.
Taxpayers also would have been hit with a previously unrecognised $379m increase in federal spending triggered by mandatory inflationary adjustments in the nutrition programmes.
“The increased costs to the federal government are several times larger than any alleged budgetary savings from the Foundation for the Future,” said Tipton. “NMPF is asking Congress to shift the costs of their proposal onto our nation’s consumers, but they apparently forgot that our government buys a lot of milk.”
Source: International Dairy Foods Association
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