Last week, Congress passed HR 933: Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act in order to avoid a government shutdown. But a rider attached to the agricultural section of the bill indicates corporate protectionism is alive and well in the federal government.

President Barack Obama has taken heavy criticism from food activists for signing the legislation. But in this instance, his hands were essentially tied. Were he to veto the bill because of this one provision, the likelihood of a government shutdown would have certainly increased.

Critics have slammed Section 735 of the law, which includes a provision that protects genetically modified organisms and genetically engineered seeds and crops from litigation, even if their consumption is found to pose health risks.

Opponents to this section have dubbed it the Monsanto Protection Act, named after the biotech giant famous for producing GMOs and genetically engineered seeds.

This isn’t the first time companies like Monsanto have been at the center of controversy. In February, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Bowman v. Monsanto Company. The biotech company had initially sued an Indiana farmer for using its patented soybeans without paying a fee.

It’s troubling enough that a large corporation sued a small-scale farmer. But what’s even more perplexing is that the text protecting GMOs slipped into HR 933 without any sort of committee hearings or substantial deliberation of its effects.

At last, it appeared as if the government had easily avoided the threat of a shutdown, which would have stopped the government from providing all but “essential” services, including defense, postal service and the penal system. The process had been free of the messy politics and rhetoric we’d seen with previous possibilities of shutdown, but Section 735 makes that political victory a little less sweet.

If blame should be placed in one specific institution of the federal government, it should be with Congress. Various reports have indicated that many members of Congress were unaware that Section 735 even existed. In this case, it seems as if the legislative process was rushed in order to authorize the funding as quickly as possible.

The Monsanto Protection Act is but one symptom of the broader disease of corporate protectionism that afflicts the government. Many major federal policies are blatantly geared toward protecting company profits ― taxes are a prime example of the government favoring corporations.

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, a left-leaning public interest group, 26 major corporations paid no income tax for the 2011 fiscal year. Despite making billions in profits, Boeing, General Electric, Mattell and Verizon all enjoyed negative income tax rates, meaning they made more money after taxes than before taxes.

We sit and ponder why the federal government continually faces budget deficits. Perhaps it has something to do with GE not paying taxes in 2011, despite raking in more than $14 billion in profits. Part of the nation’s fiscal problem is tied to our protection of corporations that don’t need the preferential treatment.

It’s time that the government place people above the interests of large, wealthy companies.

Corporate personhood is a ludicrous idea used to justify weak political backbones when it comes to standing up to lobbyists and corporate interests.

With respect to corporate protection, the present administration has been largely disappointing to this point. Radical Republicans say that Obama is a socialist who is bad for business and is destroying the economy. But corporations continue to see record profits, all while paying little to no income taxes.

Fortunately, the provisions of the Monsanto Protection Act are not permanent. They will remain in effect only until the end of the fiscal year in September, unless they are extended before then. But when that time comes, liberals can only hope that the president and congressional Democrats will stand up to corporations and begin eroding the protections afforded to them.

David Swenton is a junior political science and writing and rhetoric major. He can be reached at daswento@syr.edu or followed on Twitter at @DavidSwenton.

Published on April 4, 2013 at 2:37 am