Obama Wants U.S. Food Aid Rules To Not Be Stupid

Well, we could feed 17 million more people per year, but....

U.S. lobbyists already fighting it:

“Growing, manufacturing, bagging, shipping and transportation of nutritious U.S. food creates jobs and economic activity here at home, provides support for our U.S. Merchant Marine, essential to our national defense sealift capability, and sustains a robust domestic constituency for these programs not easily replicated in foreign aid programs,” the groups wrote. 

Twenty-one senators from farm states also wrote to the Obama administration last month, after being lobbied by the groups, asking that the food aid program be kept in its current form. 

James Caponiti, executive director of the American Maritime Congress, a trade group, said the proposed changes to the food aid program would have a devastating effect on shippers, because the law requires that 75 percent of food aid has to be transported on American-flagged ships.

“We are talking about hundreds of jobs lost,” Mr. Caponiti said. “This is a very, very bad idea.”

Hundreds of jobs to save mere millions of people...

Obviously not a smart trade.

(And, yes, I do realize that it'd actually be more than hundreds. But it's angrifying.)