Hits & Misses: Boy, does the president need to veto this stinker
Dallas Morning News

It was bad enough that the Senate ditched an amendment this week that would have replaced farm subsidies with a better crop insurance program. But then the Senate had the audacity to kill an amendment that would have put a $250,000 limit on the amount of subsidies a farmer can receive each year. The status quo also prevailed when the Senate shot down another amendment to let only farm families that earn up to $750,000 receive crop subsidies. The House agrees with the Senate, by the way. So it looks as if Congress will keep subsidizing millionaire farmers -- and handsomely. President Bush, get out your veto pen.

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Our position: U.S. senators, including Martinez, should have OK'd improved farm bill
Orlando Sentinel

The Senate has plowed under the best hope for badly needed reforms in U.S. farm policy.

Under that policy, the federal government pays billions of dollars a year in agricultural subsidies -- with most going to large farms, whether they need it or not. It's a drain on taxpayers and unfair to most farmers, who get little or nothing. It spurs overproduction and wastes resources.

Yet in passing its farm bill, the Senate rejected the most promising alternative, from Republican Richard Lugar. It would have replaced subsidies with insurance for farmers who truly need help. Florida's senators split on the proposal: Democrat Bill Nelson voted for reform, and Republican Mel Martinez voted for the status quo.

Mr. Martinez said the Senate farm bill has lower subsidies than the one Congress passed in 2002. That only makes this bill less atrocious than the last one.

Mr. Martinez also said the Lugar proposal would have "unilaterally disarmed" U.S. farmers when their competition in other countries is collecting higher subsidies. But Congress should be taking the lead on fixing farm policy instead of waiting on other countries.

Finally, Mr. Martinez said Florida farmers have urged him to support the farm bill. Drafters of the legislation bought their support by offering them a small fraction of the money earmarked for farmers of other crops in other states. But Mr. Lugar's proposal also would have made aid available for Florida farmers, if they needed it.

Senators, including Mr. Martinez, should have given reform in farm policy a chance to take root.

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56 voices of reason; Tightwad-scold coalition bodes well for reform
San Diego Union-Tribune

When the House passed a $286 billion farm bill earlier this year that added billions in new subsidies to new crops, the obstacles to a rational, sensible U.S. agriculture policy seemed bigger than ever. But a surprising bipartisan coalition has emerged in the Senate to fight for reform. If President Bush sticks to his promise to veto any farm bill that doesn't reduce the subsidies going to a prosperous industry that doesn't need them, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have no choice but to compromise.

This week, 56 senators -- including, thankfully, California Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer -- backed an amendment cutting some farm payments by more than 30 percent and closing a loophole that allowed farmers to receive subsidies even when they didn't grow any crops. Because of a filibuster threat by farm-state senators, Senate leaders said any amendment had to get 60 votes, so it was dropped. Nevertheless, when more than half the Senate says the status quo must go, it's clear that the momentum is on the side of the reformers -- finally.

The main reason is the growing understanding among core constituencies in each party that our present farm policy is an abomination. Fiscal conservative Republicans see subsidies to a thriving industry as an outrage in an era of huge budget deficits. Nanny-state Democrats think it's outrageous to subsidize corn, soybeans and wheat because doing so directly subsidizes the mass production of the cheap high-sugar, high-fat, high-calorie processed foods that are a key culprit in the fattening of America.

Between the tightwads, the scolds and a president newly eager to veto irresponsible legislation, the prospects for genuine change in agriculture policy have rarely seemed better. This development may be decades overdue, but it's still great news.

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Farm Bill Passes Senate With All The Subsidies

Highlands Today, Sebring, Fla.

The U.S. Senate passed the much debated farm bill, with just about everything everyone has been begging them to toss out of it. It's just one more example of our elected officials ignoring what we're saying. Let's hope it gets changed while working out compromises with the House and, if necessary, President Bush vetoes it.

Rich mega-farm corporations and millionaire farmers stand to gain the most from federal subsidies sprinkled throughout the Senate-approved farm bill. Big Corn, Big Wheat, Big Everything makes a killing, just as they always do on this welfare of the worst kind.

This farm bill does nothing to cut the fat cats out of subsidies. Just about every American has pleaded with Congress to finally trim the welfare out of the farm bill, but our bought-and-paid-for politicians just can't manage it.

If this bill makes it through, and is signed into law for the five years farm bills are supposed to be in effect, Americans should toss out every member of the House and Senate who voted for it. Until voters send such a message, we'll just keep getting the same old thing every time.

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Eliminate farm subsidies
Deseret Morning News - Salt Lake City

We hope President Bush has the sense to hold to his promise to veto the farm subsidy bill working its way to his desk.

At a time when crop prices are higher than ever, both the Senate and House versions would increase subsidies and expand the crops to which they apply. Not only would the bills primarily enrich the already-rich, they would continue to prohibit struggling Third World countries from getting ahead.

Even former president Jimmy Carter, hardly a hard-line conservative, wrote a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post decrying this aspect of farm subsidies. His Carter Center works with Third World farmers and has seen the effects of U.S. subsidies, which he said encourage overproduction. U.S. cotton subsidies cost sub-Saharan farmers $302 million, a 2002 Oxfam International report said. And Carter notes that 80 percent of those subsidies go to the richest 10 percent of cotton farmers in this country.

Other, more traditionally conservative voices have noted how the subsidies benefit wealthy absentee farmers, while the less wealthy people who lease their land and do the actual farming don't do nearly as well. The Wall Street Journal referred to a map from the Environmental Working Group that shows the homes of 562 farmers who receive annual government subsidies -- all of which are in the heart of New York City. The Journal also recently noted that Scottie Pippen, David Letterman and Ted Turner have received subsidies.

Farm subsidies were started during the Great Depression as a way to keep the poor from going bankrupt and having their farms sold at auction. That need is long gone. Today, subsidies are tools with which to make the rich even richer, and to protect political power. Only about 2 percent of Americans live on farms these days. Most subsidies go to large corporate farms.

People who don't understand the free market argue that subsidies bring stability to volatile markets. But the crops not covered by subsidies have enjoyed stable markets through the years. Now, however, the Senate bill would expand subsidies to vegetable and fruit growers, without anyone being able to demonstrate need.

Two senators, Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., had a great plan to replace subsidies with a crop insurance plan that would protect farmers against catastrophe. That was scuttled.

Bush said he would veto anything that doesn't limit subsidies to farmers earning about $200,000 or less. A better idea would be to eliminate them entirely and let the market rule farming, as it does so many other aspects of the economy.

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Amber Waves of Green
Wall Street Journal

Money may not grow on trees, but it's close enough for some gentleman farmers. Late last week, the Senate killed an attempt to limit federal subsidies flowing to farmers in the country's top income brackets.

Under the amendment sponsored by Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, eligible recipients of the government's largesse would have been capped at incomes of $750,000 per year. How draconian. That's not even halfway to the White House's proposal to end the subsidies at adjusted gross income of $200,000, a level Democrats often use to define the "rich." The amendment nonetheless went down by a revealing 48-47, well short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a filibuster.

Naturally, Senators who voted to keep subsidies for the super-rich included those from the big cotton and rice states, such as Arkansas Democrats Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor. Kent Conrad, the populist "deficit hawk" from North Dakota, also joined a total of 12 Democrats in opposing limits on aid for big agribusiness. Even such vocal conservatives as Richard Burr (R., N.C.), Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) voted against capping the federal handout. Ditto for outgoing pork captain Trent Lott, and Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), among 35 Republicans all told.

The Senate then voted overwhelmingly to pass the farm bill, which will have to be reconciled with the House version, where the income cap is a mere $2 million. Farmers will reap around $20 billion this year in federal handouts -- despite strong crop prices and rising land values -- and two-thirds will go to the wealthiest 10% of farms. Politicians justify a more powerful government in the name of helping the poor, but the farm bill proves once again that in practice it typically serves the powerful.

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Close Doesn't Count
Baltimore Sun

In the Senate last week, history was in the making, and almost a moment to be proud of. A majority of senators voted to shrink federal crop subsidies to wealthy farmers and landowners, and well over a third favored scrapping the subsidy program altogether.

But close only counts in horseshoes. Those long-overdue reforms, which would have put some of the savings into nutrition and conservation programs, needed a three-fifths majority to pass. Corporate farms and land conglomerates still have enough support among lawmakers from the South and Midwest to keep the agri-welfare system intact for another five years.

Perhaps it's ungracious to complain. Maryland comes in for a nice chunk of change to improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay through programs included in the Senate version of the farm bill. The more than $200 million over five years falls far short of the $504 million for the bay watershed approved by the House in its version of the legislation, but it provides a nice floor for negotiations between the two chambers.

Maryland, its farmers and most of the country would have fared better, though, if the crop subsidy reforms had gone through. Both Maryland senators, Barbara A. Mikulski and Benjamin L. Cardin, were among the ranks of would-be reformers.

This latest farm bill update continues a practice that awards more than two-thirds of the crop subsidies to one-third of farmers, who are generally not in small-plot states such as Maryland.

Most of the measure's $286 billion cost is devoted to food stamps and other nutrition programs, which have been improved in the Senate bill to raise monthly minimum benefits and to encourage healthier diets, including fruit and vegetables. And for the first time, fruit and vegetable farmers will also be eligible for subsidies.

These improvements, though, don't justify continuing payments to farmers regardless of income at a time when crop prices are high. President Bush proposed to limit payments to farmers with annual incomes no higher than $200,000; the House set a limit of $1 million. The Senate mustered a ceiling of $750,000, but only for part-time farmers or absentee landlords, and not until 2010.

If the final version of the farm bill fails to make more progress toward subsidy reform, Mr. Bush has threatened a veto. But people in need of the emergency food aid and the boost in their food stamp buying power promised by the House and Senate versions of the legislation shouldn't be caught in the middle of this dispute.

The White House and congressional negotiators should commit themselves to speedy agreement on a bolder path toward reform well before spring planting season.

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You're taxed to pay others
Chattanooga Times Free Press

How do you like the idea that tax money is taken from you to subsidize some others -- up to $360,000 each?

Or did you even know that is happening?

Not only is that part of the $286 billion farm bill in Congress but the Senate voted last week not to scale back the subsidy payments from a maximum of $360,000 each to "only" $250,000 per recipient.

This all started back during the Great Depression, to help "poor farmers." But now members of Congress keep on paying subsidies with your tax money to buy votes -- and not just to help "poor" farmers, as the $360,000 maximum indicates.

Much of your tax money for farm subsidy payments goes to big corporate farms, and to people who own large expanses of land but never get their hands in the dirt at all. Taxpayers are victimized.

In fact, the Senate last week voted 58 against and only 37 for replacing farm subsidies with government-paid (meaning taxpayer-paid) insurance that would have guaranteed farmers 85 percent of their anticipated crop revenue and 80 percent of their average adjusted gross income for the previous five years.

The government shouldn't be paying subsidies to anyone with your tax money. But it does, not only spending your tax money but also artificially raising the prices you have to pay at the store.
Farm subsidies are something like drug addiction in that the recipients get "hooked." It would not be advisable to pull the rug suddenly out from under farm operations that have become addicted to taxpayer-financed subsidies. So what would be a good solution?

Instead of continuing subsidy payments at the present high level, they should be cut 20 percent or 25 percent per year, ending all subsidies in four or five years.

But Congress isn't thinking about doing that. It's continuing to tax you and raise your prices to buy votes by subsidizing others. That's expensive and wrong.

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Endless manure
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

The U.S. Senate once again has failed to slow the nonstop pigout on multibillion-dollar farm subsidies. Senators of both parties overwhelmingly rejected two attempts to limit the annual handouts to Big Agribusiness.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, reminds that subsidies were not created to send multimillion-dollar payments to giant corporate farms or pay people who haven't farmed in decades. Never mind that, according to The Heritage Foundation, Mr. Grassley has received $225,041 in farm subsidies since 1995.

Over the same period, Fortune 500 companies have harvested millions. John Hancock Life Insurance received $2.8 million. Westvaco pulled in more than $534,000. A "hobby farmer," David Rockefeller was paid nearly $554,000. Ted Turner received nearly $207,000.

More than 90 percent of the wealthfare goes to growers of corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. Others, including struggling small growers, usually get nothing.

And yet most thrive without subsidies. Farms have one of the lowest failure rates of any industry and farm incomes are setting records. The average farm household earns $81,420 and has a net worth of $838,875.

And yet the Senate passed a $286 billion five-year farm bill expanding subsidies for growers. Never mind the adverse effect of government subsidies on the cost of food.

Big Government is ensuring that Big Agribusiness never runs out of manure.

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Farm Bill: One step forward, two steps back
Kennebec Journal, ME

Where can you find Republicans sounding like Socialists, farmers from Zip Code 90210 getting million dollar taxpayer subsidies and talk of poor people who are supposed to get by on a little more than a dollar a meal in food stamps?

Why, the U.S. Senate, of course.

This week, the Senate broke through a six-week logjam and finally passed a Farm Bill that contains some improvements in the nation's public nutrition programs such as Food Stamps and the Emergency Food Assistance Program. But the price of doing so was the continuation of taxpayer subsidies for well-to-do corporate farmers who are currently getting record prices for their commodity crops.

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins sounded like a very regretful Robin Hood last week after passage of the bill:

"I am particularly disappointed that this bill does not include an amendment, that I supported, that would have capped payments to farmers at $250,000. In addition, another amendment that was defeated would have prohibited payments to individuals who earn more than $750,000 per year. These amendments would have provided assistance to farmers who truly need the help, and denied assistance to giant corporate farms and individuals who unfairly receive it.

"The defeat of these amendments ensures that taxpayer subsidies in this new farm bill will continue to flow to the largest and wealthiest farmers in the country, while potato, apple, and blueberry growers in Maine will receive very little assistance. Had the farm subsidy programs been reformed, significantly more money would have been available for nutrition and conservation programs."

Sen. Olympia Snowe, unlike Collins, voted against capping subsidy payments to farmers at $250,000, the last and most likely-to-pass of four ill-fated amendments aimed at reforming commodity subsidies in the Farm Bill. While Snowe voted in favor of the earlier and more radical reform measure -- prohibiting payments to farmers who earn more than $750,000 a year -- that one was universally deemed dead on arrival.

Programs for the hungry got a boost in the Senate bill, but there's a fundamental problem with what they got. While Food Stamp benefits will be increased and eligibility expanded, and food pantries will get more food from the feds after years of decline, those increases only last five years -- and then they stop. Which means that unless more money is found to pay for nutrition programs at the end of those five years, all the families and individuals who became eligible for food stamps under the latest farm bill will then lose their benefits.

Of course, had reform of the subsidy payments to well-to-do farmers been passed, that money could have been available much sooner for the nation's hungry. Consider this: The Government Accountability Office recently discovered that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had paid $1.1 billion to dead farmers' estates and companies between 1999 and 2005. That's one of those extreme examples that normally would prove the exception to the rule. But in the case of the Farm Bill, the agricultural subsidies given to farmers in this country really have gone to millionaires in New York City and Beverly Hills (who are partners in corporate farms), as well as midwestern farmers who earn up to $2.5 million a year.

It's not over yet for the Farm Bill. The Senate and House bills must be reconciled and both subsidy-heavy measures face the threat of a veto from the president, who has uncharacteristically sided with reformists in an attempt to gut the commodity payment programs.

That bargaining will likely take place in the early part of next year. In the meantime, those in the majority in both the House and Senate who voted for the current measure should be acknowledged for sending at least temporary help to those who need it (the hungry) while continuing permanent help for those (well-remunerated farmers) who don't.

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Farm bill fattens fat cats' wallets
Austin American-Statesman Editorial

When it comes to handing out taxpayers' money to farmers, Congress will not discriminate: It will fork out billions to the richest farm operations - not just the small and family-owned farms - and members of both parties do it.

Every five years, Congress takes up legislation renewing the nation's massive program of subsidizing farmers. The bill includes other significant measures, such as funding for food stamps and land conservation. This year's version will authorize spending about $286 billion over the next five years.

Most Americans probably have no problem with subsidizing small and family farms, though few of those remain, to cope with unexpected outbreaks of crop disease, drought and other destructive weather, and a roller-coaster market. Farmers invest a great deal of time and money annually on a risky venture.

But most Americans would not care to pay subsidies to wealthy farmers - particularly partnerships and corporations - that are quite capable of riding out a bad year on their own, any more than they would care to subsidize, say, a Wall Street banking firm that makes a bad bet on subprime mortgages. Nor do they care to subsidize nonfarmers who invest in agriculture as a sideline.

As Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said last week, farm subsidies were "not created to send multimillion-dollar payments to giant corporate farms, or payments to people who haven't been near a farm in decades." But an amendment, sponsored by Grassley and Sen. Byran Dorgan, D-N.D., to lower the cap on such payments to $250,000 per married couple, down from the current limit of $360,000, failed to muster the 60 votes needed to pass. Another reform amendment, by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., would have banned subsidies to farmers making more than $750,000 a year, also failed.

Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas Republicans, voted against the amendments and supported the bill. A Cornyn spokesman said the bill makes major changes in the complex subsidy program that will cut taxpayer-funded government by 44 percent, and that Texas cotton and rice farmers especially need the help. A Hutchison spokesman said she felt the proposed amendments went too far with reform.

Reform groups, though, say the bill is mostly business as usual, with the bulk of the subsidy payments going to major farm companies and the wealthy, not small farm families.

The Bush administration has threatened to veto the farm bill because of its extraordinary cost. First, though, the House and Senate must reconcile the differences in their bills.

The guess here is that, in the end, not much will change. President Bush likely will not want to hurt Republican farm state allies in Congress, just as most Democrats won't want to anger farm state voters in a presidential election year. Taxpayers will pick up the tab come April 15.

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Let's all get a chance to belly up to the farm-bill trough
Arizona Republic

Soowee! If the Senate's subsidy-larded farm bill were a pig, it could barely waddle to the trough. Well, if Congress insists on these outdated handouts, let's all get a shot at them. I personally am willing to be paid for not writing. Plus, I'm willing right now to accept an annual income cap of $750,000 for "non-farmers" to qualify for benefits. The Senate would phase it in to ease the pain for folks used to the current $2.5 million threshold. Hurt me - I can take it.

Kathleen Ingley, editorial writer

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Farm Bill enriches those who don't need help

Sensible caps on aid didn't make it into this budget-busting, $286 billion monstrosity.
Portland Maine Herald/Telegram

The Senate approved a bill on Friday that doesn't just have wasteful pork, but spends unnecessarily on just about every other product that comes from a farm.

The 2007 reauthorization of the Farm Bill perpetuates wasteful spending and federal largesse to special interests that don't need the money. President Bush should veto this measure, or a similar one, should it reach his desk following a House-Senate conference.

Maine's Republican senators split on the bill, with Sen. Olympia Snowe in support and Sen. Susan Collins voting against it.

The bill is a budget-buster, costing the federal government a whopping $286 billion over five years. For its money, the federal government will get the opportunity to subsidize farmers who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. President Bush has rightly called for capping farm subsidies for families earning $200,000 or more. Right now, that cap doesn't kick in until a family earns $2.5 million.

While the Senate bill does contain money for some of Maine's specialty farmers, that doesn't redeem it. Just because a bill will send money to Maine is no reason to support it. In fact, this is a fundamental flaw with how Congress works. Spending proposals are larded up with enough goodies until there's something for nearly everyone.

So attractive was this bill to various constituencies that only 14 senators opposed it, while 79 supported it.

That's enough votes to override Bush's veto, but fortunately the tally was closer in the House, where the vote on a similar -- though not identical -- measure was 231-191.

It is long past time for there to be a fundamental shift in U.S. agriculture policy. American farmers are among the most productive in the world and can compete without the wasteful subsidies handed out by the federal government. This notion has gained some currency in Washington -- there were serious attempts during the debate to limit subsidies given to the wealthiest farmers -- but parochial politics keeps winning.

No doubt, when a bill makes it way to President Bush in the New Year following a House-Senate conference, the White House will be under pressure from Republicans warning that a veto could affect the party's chances in the November elections.

But there's also something else that could harm the GOP come the fall, and that's an inability to stand by its principle of fiscal restraint.

The latest farm bill is more of the same from Washington, and its passage suggests change will not be coming easily or quickly.