Farm Subsidies for Rich Farmers
For all their talk about fiscal responsibility, the Democrats have no problem forcing the taxpayers to pay subsidies to wealthy farmers. The Washington Post comments:
Under current law, the sky is pretty much the limit when it comes to who can receive crop subsidies and how much they can get. On paper, no one is allowed more than $360,000 in federal farm benefits per year, but the provision is riddled with loopholes. The upshot, according to the Agriculture Department, is that some 570 farms, concentrated in the cotton- and rice-growing regions of the Deep South, received $250,000 or more each in 2005. Two-thirds of all crop subsidies go to just 10 percent of farms.
To his credit, President Bush proposed making the $360,000 limit a real cap. More important, he wanted a means test barring payment to any producer whose annual adjusted gross income exceeds $200,000. Even this is pretty generous, considering that the president just vetoed a child health-care bill on the grounds that it would have provided medical insurance to some American families making more than $83,000 per year. But in the cloud-cuckoo land world of agriculture, Mr. Bush’s idea was radical — too radical for the House of Representatives, which brushed the administration proposal aside. The House version of the farm bill would allow full-time farming households earning as much as $2 million per year to collect payments.
Plenty of Republicans like subsidies as well, but they don’t control the Congress anymore so they can’t be blamed as much as the Democrats.
It still amazes me that writers like Joel Connelly of the Seattle-PI can’t grasp why the taxpayers have had it and every chance they get they’re going to say, “enough!”
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