On the Farm Bill -- Beltway's 'Green Acres'

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 11/8/7 | Debra J. Saunders

[SmithL]

Watch how the new Democratic Congress packs pork into this year's federal Farm Bill. You'd think that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are trying to make George W. Bush look good. The Democrats had told America that if they won power, they would end the GOP's unconscionable spending bonanza. Now the Dems are wallowing in other people's money. In July, the House passed a pork-laden $280 billion five-year Farm Bill. Now the Senate is poised to pass a $288 billion Farm Bill that hands billions of taxpayer dollars - your money - to agribusiness.

It doesn't matter that farm incomes are at an all-time high. The Senate Farm Bill mandates $42 billion in subsidies for five crops (corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat). It sets aside $26 billion in "direct payments" to farmers or people who once farmed land. As The Chronicle's Carolyn Lochhead has so ably reported, 10 percent of beneficiaries will receive 60 percent of direct-payment funds. Dead people have received checks. According to Time magazine, Uncle Sam has given Farm-Bill money to 1,324 residents of New York City.

So why would Congress pass such an outrageous bill? Because it can.

And clearly Democratic leaders, as the GOP biggies before them, have decided that they are more likely to hang onto power if they give your money to Big Ag. They fear those farm interests far more than they fear the wrath of informed voters.

You've heard this song before. In 2002, Bush made the mistake of signing a pork fest of a farm bill put together by free-spending Republicans.

. . . Speaker Pelosi, a San Francisco Democrat, promises reform in the next Farm Bill. Ha.

[Carry_Okie]

No mention of the NAIS rider in this bill, one of the biggest threats to liberty we face. After RFID tagging all the animals the infrastructure will be in place to track the rest of us.