HOLMEN, WIS. — Randy Messelt thought little of President Trump’s recent trip to central Wisconsin to announce tens of billions of dollars in additional federal aid for farmers.
“It’s too little, too late. It’s a joke. A joke. It’s a whole joke,” Messelt said of the president’s federal farm aid programs, looking up at an empty 150-foot barn that once housed 53 cattle. All but one of the four farms once adjacent to Messelt’s have closed, and he is not sure whom he will vote for this fall. He added of Trump’s most recent announcement: “I don’t care if it’s a Democrat or a Republican or whatever. What they do is they toss you a bone here or there so it looks like it’s hanging on, looks like the economy is doing fine. And then the bottom falls out."
In recent weeks, the president has with increasing urgency sought to unlock federal spending to shore up key voting blocs ahead of the 2020 presidential election. He has attempted to push billions in taxpayer money to farmers, seniors and other voters in swing states that could decide his political fate. This drive has only intensified since Trump left the hospital this week. He is now prodding Congress to send another round of $1,200 stimulus checks to millions of Americans, similar to the ones sent earlier this year with his name on them.
Presidents have traditionally sought to deliver material economic benefits to their constituents to win reelection, but Trump’s latest efforts to throw money at key electoral constituencies — with or without congressional approval — stand out as uniquely aggressive in the modern presidency, according to longtime budget experts.
“Clearly, he is trying to buy the election in a way nobody has ever done before, at least not in my lifetime," said Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former Republican staff director for the Senate Budget Committee.
But it is not clear that Trump’s efforts to throw money at key voting groups will in fact sway voters to his side, in part because the execution of these programs has often proved either uneven or nonexistent.
Trump’s pledge last month to send American seniors $200 coupons to offset their prescription drug costs has resulted in no concrete action or additional benefit for seniors as of Thursday, according to Larry Levitt, a health-care expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit.
Trump also announced last month that billions in aid for Puerto Rico would be released after years of delays, a move interpreted by some as aimed at shoring up his support among Latinos in Florida. Trump has for years insulted Puerto Rico’s leaders while withholding funding for the island approved by Congress, igniting fierce criticism that he stalled its recovery from Hurricane Maria.
While he has repeatedly said that he would like to send out another round of $1,200 checks, the president earlier this week publicly called off negotiations with congressional Democrats on another stimulus package, probably killing his chances of achieving this goal.
Billions in aid for the farmers has been released by the Trump administration but also produced mixed results, with some critics calling it insufficient and others arguing it has gone primarily to large producers rather than small and independent operators.
In Wisconsin, an infusion of federal aid has helped slow down the worst of a tsunami of dairy farm closures over the past three years, but the state continues to lead the nation in farm bankruptcies. About 25 dairy farms in Wisconsin have filed for bankruptcy this year alone, despite almost all receiving money from Trump’s bailout, according to a review of court records conducted by the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog group. Trump consistently trails former vice president Joe Biden in the polls in Wisconsin as well as other key Midwestern states that carried him to victory four years ago.
White House officials adamantly denied politics were part of the motivation behind any of the president’s recent spending announcements. Voters have consistently given Trump higher marks than Biden on the economy, a bright spot for the president even in polls that show him trailing.
“These actions have absolutely nothing to do with politics but are good policies that advance President Trump’s agenda for the forgotten men and women of this country,” said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman.
Rachel Semmel, a spokeswoman for the White House budget office, also said it was “absolutely ridiculous” to suggest politics played into the administration’s announcement of Puerto Rico funding. Federal Emergency Management Agency officials have been working with Puerto Rico on releasing the funds for several years. Lizzie Litzow, a FEMA spokeswoman, said in a statement that the funding is the “largest” amount of obligated money in the agency’s history and “represent our continued commitment to the people of Puerto Rico.”
In Wisconsin, there were many signs the cash push could buttress Trump’s reelection bid. The president is benefiting not just from his unilateral actions to push money out the door but also from the impact of federal aid programs approved by Congress for which some voters give him credit. Congress approved more than $2 trillion in emergency aid in March, an enormous one-time infusion.
Don Weigel, 54, an independent voter and dairy farmer near the town of Marshfield, has voted for both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates amid the typical swings in dairy prices. The past two years have been as hard as any. Weigel for the first time started an apple orchard and considered taking a part-time job to supplement his income.
Still, Weigel said he will “probably” back Trump in November, in part because of the $14,000 he received in federal aid this spring through the Cares Act. Weigel said the additional assistance allowed him to make payments on seed and fertilizer, as well as to pay off some of the debt he accrued in acquiring the property of a neighboring farmer.
“It’s helped a lot. It really keeps a guy going,” said Weigel, as he went to crush the grapes that had snaked around his grain silo and would eventually become juice. “Every time you look at a candidate, you look at: 'Are they going to benefit me?’ That’s what you always look at.”
Farmers like Weigel proved crucial for Trump’s initial path to the White House. Approximately 70 percent of farmers, traditionally Democratic or independent, voted for him in 2016.
But once in office, the president took actions that risked alienating that base of support. America’s farmers have been roiled by multiple financial crises under the Trump administration, including some directly tied to the president’s decisions, particularly the dramatic price volatility related to his ongoing trade wars.
In order to insulate domestic manufacturing from foreign competition, the president slapped tariffs on international imports of products such as steel and aluminum. Other countries retaliated. Most notably, China imposed tariffs on American agricultural exports, a move designed to weaken the president politically. Trump also sought to renegotiate trade deals with America’s European and North American allies, which plunged trade markets into further uncertainty.
The president has turned to cash bailouts to ease the political and economic fallout. During President Barack Obama’s second term, the amount of money devoted to farmers ranged from $9.8 billion to $13 billion. That number soared to $22 billion in 2019 and is expected to come in as high as $56 billion by the end of the year, by far a record, according to the Environmental Working Group.
Wisconsin farmers received about $600 million in federal aid in 2019 due primarily to Trump’s bailout program, roughly twice as much as they receive in a normal year and a number that will be even larger in 2020. Dairy farm bankruptcies have leveled off this year from the outset of Trump’s administration, when they surged, in part due to the federal assistance last year and this year.
The billions in federal funding spreads through the rural Wisconsin economy as farmers buy grain, repair their tractors, or fix their barns. Randy Johnson, a mechanic who runs Randy’s Farm Services outside Black River Falls, said he now has a backlog of six weeks of repairs on tractors and hay balers.
“When the farmers get money, everyone is doing good,” said Howard Hoffman, 64, a sales manager at ProVision Partners Cooperative, which supplies grain to dairy farmers. Hoffman said sales at the co-op’s feed business are up as much as 15 percent this year. “The programs they’ve put in place are better than any we’ve ever seen. And it goes right back into the economy.”
The president’s embrace of bailouts and higher federal spending flies against Republican economic orthodoxy and has frustrated some of his closest White House aides, traditional conservatives who oppose higher levels of government spending. And the scattershot approach may be less effective than reaching a deal on another stimulus package with congressional Democrats, which has remained out of reach despite increasing strain on the economy and the president’s eagerness for a deal.
Still, many Democrats in rural Wisconsin said they believe Trump’s late push for more federal spending will help his reelection prospects. At a recent Tuesday night in a barn outside of La Crosse, Lisa Vander, 58, a doctoral student in economics with two masters degrees, hosted a handful of neighbors to spray paint large cardboard yard signs for Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.).
Only one farmer, a lifelong Democrat, was in attendance. While Vander said many farmers do support Biden, she has met few who have abandoned the president despite the severe disruption to their trade markets.
“If someone gives you $8,000, or $10,000 or $12,000 — you best believe that’s going to make a difference,” Vander said.