Confirming my ongoing skepticism about the committment of self-identified fiscal conservatives, especially when it comes to cuts to programs that benefit their constituencies, Politico last night posted an excellent story about the Republican Study Committee’s silence on farm subsidies:

Net cash farm income for 2010 is projected to finish near $92.5 billion — a 41 percent increase even after subtracting payments from the government. Yet conservatives are almost tongue-tied, as seen last week with the Republican Study Committee’s proposal to eliminate relatively modest subsidies for an organic food growers program without mentioning the nearly $5 billion in much larger government direct payments to farm country — including to the home districts of many of the RSC’s members.

Indeed, 24 of the RSC’s estimated 165 members hail from the House Agriculture Committee, and total annual direct payments to their districts run more than $1.09 billion a year, according to a POLITICO review of data compiled by the Environmental Working Group.

Farm groups aren’t exactly in a rage to offer up their programs for reform, but the National Association of Wheat Growers at their winter board meeting last week gave us plenty of evidence, as if more were needed, that support for the status quo is solid. An interesting nuance is their argument that, if they do “contribute” to deficit reduction, they won’t be “giving” more than anyone else, thank you very much:

NAWG supports the policy that if federal agriculture programs are subject to budget cuts to achieve deficit reduction, then the same percentage of cut should apply to all federal government programs.

While I might think that almost all areas of the federal budget need be cut, I just don’t buy the argument that farm subsidies are no more damaging, and therefore shouldn’t be cut more, than any other areas of government intervention. The federal government, in my opinion, has a role to play in limited and defined areas of public life. I strongly disagree with the NAWG’s implication that farm subsidies are just as important/​necessary as, say, public funding for national defense or for the control of infectious disease.