Is the House really in the grips of conservatives?

Charles Krauthammer is lauding the principled House.  Kathleen Parker also calls the House principled, if a little misguided (like stubborn children refusing to come out of their rooms for supper, even though the alternative is going to bed hungry).

What's all this about?  Well, in an interesting move, after the GOP failed to pass the GOP led Farm Bill earlier, the House has passed the Farm Bill at a second attempt.  The Farm Bill, however, drops all financing of food stamps. The purported reason for this omission is that: (a) Food stamps are a waste, and (b) that its an unrelated measure so should be voted on separately.

Hmmm ... all seems very conservative and principled at first glance.  The problem, of course, as Gail Collins points out, the Farm Bill is not really very conservative and full of unnecessary wasteful handouts.  Here are some pertinent facts:

• The Farm Bill has contained the Food Stamps provision for the last 40 years,  This isn't a last moment afterthought.  It's basically the structure with 40 years precedent.  Conservatism is usually supposed to look for incremental change and not dramatic change.  This sudden separation of the two is pretty radical.
• The error rate and fraud in the agricultural subsidies is massive.
• The Farm Bill includes $147 million a year in reparations to Brazil to make up for the fact that the US was ruled to have violated the World Trade Organization through market-distorting effects of cotton subsidies..
• The House Bill actually increases the amount of subsidies for farmers and increases crop insurance.

Here's Gail Collins' humorous description of crop insurance:

"Crop insurance gets bigger under the new plan. Here’s how: You, the taxpayer, fork over the majority of the cost of the farmers’ policy premiums. (Up to 80 percent in the case of cotton.) Also, you spend about $1.3 billion a year to compensate the insurance agents for the fact that they have to sell coverage to any eligible farmer, whatever his prospects for success. Plus, if yields actually do drop, you have to compensate the insurance companies for part of the cost of claims."

Got all that?  So, the House protected us from the hugely deficit increasing entitlement program called Food Stamps, vowing to pass it separately, only to pass a Farm Bill that increases subsidies and crop insurance to farmers and has stupid unnecessary payments totaling million to keep illegally subsidizing farmers.  That's conservative?  I am not sure what principle Krauthammer and Kathleen Parker think the House adhere's to.

Meanwhile, David Brooks has a scathing piece in which he dissects and tears apart the arguments against the Immigration Bill that is stalled in the House.  As Brooks points out about the Senate Immigration Bill:

• Based on estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill would increase the gross domestic product by 3.3 percent by 2023 and by 5.4 percent by 2033. 
• A separate study by the American Action Forum found that it would increase per capita income by $1,700 after 10 years.
• According to government estimates, the Senate bill would reduce federal deficits by up to $850 billion over the next 20 years. 
• The Senate bill reduces the 75-year Social Security fund shortfall by half-a-trillion dollars.
• According to the C.B.O., the bill would reduce illegal immigration by somewhere between 33 percent to 50 percent.  It does not eliminate illegal immigration, but its much better than the do nothing policy at the moment. 
• Conservatives say they want to avoid a European-style demographic collapse. But without more immigrants, and the higher fertility rates they bring, that is exactly what the U.S. faces.

As Brooks points out, much of the argument on wage depression is wrong, ill informed and not conservative:

"conservatives are not supposed to take a static, protectionist view of economics. They’re not supposed to believe that growth can be created or even preserved if government protects favored groups from competition. Conservatives are supposed to believe in the logic of capitalism; that if you encourage the movement of goods, ideas and people, then you increase dynamism, you increase creative destruction and you end up creating more wealth that improves lives over all."

Hmmm ... seen in this light, can the GOP House's opposition be called very conservative?