Today, the NYT rightly slams the subsidy lobby's farm bill and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's embrace of it as reform.

The Anti-Reform Farm Bill

American farmers have seldom been as prosperous as they are today. Yet the House is poised to approve a subsidy-laden farm bill more nearly suited to the Great Depression.

The bill would perpetuate an outdated and hugely expensive — $70 billion over the last five years — system of price supports and direct payments that disproportionately rewards big growers of row crops like corn, wheat and soybeans. More than half of this spending is concentrated in about 20 Congressional districts.

Incredibly, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, touts the bill as a big step toward reform. Ms. Pelosi seems especially proud of a new means test under which farmers with adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more would no longer receive subsidies, down from the present cap of $2.5 million.

Reducing an outrageous cap to a lower outrageous cap is not exactly our idea of reform. The $1 million limit is also five times the $200,000 cap proposed by the Bush administration, which Ms. Pelosi is constantly accusing of catering to the rich.

The bill modestly increases spending for land conservation, and offers new financing for fruit and vegetable growers. But none of this can mask the bill’s denial of reality. Because of the boom in ethanol production, for instance, corn is setting all kinds of records — 92 million acres in production, prices at $3.30 a bushel. Even so, under the House bill, corn farmers will receive $2 billion in direct payments for each of the next five years.

Soybean farmers are similarly favored, as are cotton growers, whose subsidized cotton floods world markets, distorting trade and making it hard for farmers in poor countries to compete.

When the House debate begins later this week, Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, and others will offer an alternative bill that would shift money from the subsidy programs to conservation, nutrition and other worthy objectives. That would be real reform.