According to Reuters, that's what House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson said in reference to the farm subsidy payment limitation proposal he announced late yesterday.

We're doing our best to double-check with Speaker Pelosi's office just to make sure that she considers this proposal reform. We'll update you later.

Mr. Peterson's proposal is complicated, and we'll respond to it in more detail later, too. But we know enough now to agree wholeheartedly with the Center for Rural Affairs: this is not what progressives would consider reform.

But let's assume for the moment the chairman is correct in saying Speaker Pelosi considers this reform.

Focusing just on one feature of Chairman Peterson's proposal--a provision that would deny farm subsidies to individuals with an adjusted gross income of $1 million or more (0.1 percent of all taxpayer)--we can now officially calculate that when it comes to restricting farm subsidies to wealthy individuals, the Bush administration, which proposed a threshold of $200,000 AGI for subsidies, is exactly five times more progressive than the House Democratic leadership.

Many more measurements to come.