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President Obama was in Michigan last week to sign a 10-year, $1 trillion farm bill. While much of the debate has centered around the spending on food stamps, buried in the 1,000-page plan are many other provisions that are indefensibly bad policy. While some are praising, and others complaining, about slightly rolling back spending on food stamps and eliminating some of the direct payments to "farmers" (who did not actually farm), the bill goes far beyond that. This bill continues special subsidy deals to farmers in every area in the country — from corn and beans to rice and peanuts...

The state Legislature is considering giving more funding to a program that only delivers 19 percent of the jobs it claims to have created. Legislation is on the House floor that would increase the 21st Century Jobs Fund, a corporate welfare program created under former Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Many House Republicans and Democrats oppose the seven-bill package, or aspects of it. Getting enough votes to pass the bills and send them to the Senate could be tough, but the thread of opposition preventing that from happening could soon prove very thin. If the legislation reaches the Senate, passage seems highly...

February 6, 2014 The Farm Bill vs. America Earlier this week the Senate voted on a farm bill.  I voted against this bill, and I delivered the following speech on the Senate Floor to explain why.  I wanted to share this with you since it is important for Utahns, especially those from rural parts of the state, to understand the problems inherent in this bill:This Farm Bill is a monument to every dysfunction Washington indulges to bend our politics and twist our economy to benefit itself at the expense of the American people. The topline talking point among defenders...

President Obama boarded Air Force One this morning together with the 949-page, $956 billion farm bill, which he plans to sign at the Michigan State University on Friday. The president was accompanied by White House press secretary Jay Carney, Senior Advisors Dan Pfeiffer and Valerie Jarrett.

With all this talk in Washington about income inequality, why isn't Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi — or anyone in the greed-and-envy lobby — going after the grotesquely unfair farm bill? This near-$200 billion bill is one of the biggest giveaways to the rich and politically powerful in recent history. Usually, in Washington Congress doles out taxpayer subsidies to industries that are in severe financial trouble — think of bailouts to autos, banks and steel. That's bad enough. But the farm economy isn't in distress. It's booming, and agribusiness still walked away with $20 billion a year in direct payments,...

The long-tortured farm bill cleared Congress Tuesday, ending a two year struggle that split the old farm-food coalition as never before and dramatized the growing isolation of agriculture and rural America in an ever more urban House. Written off as dead just months ago, the giant five-year measure won final approval from the Senate on a 68-32 roll call and goes next to President Barack Obama for his signature.

Congress‘ mammoth farm bill restores the imposition of an extra fee on home heating oil, hitting consumers in cold-weather states just as utility costs are spiking.

Elected Democrats and movement progressives are up in arms over the meager cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP - commonly known as food stamps). Hot Air's Erika Johnsen covered the non-drama over the farm bill yesterday and noted the very meager reforms included in the legislation, but some Democrats are bemoaning the $800 million in yearly cuts to SNAP in apocalyptic terms. The overall SNAP program costs $70 billion per year. Hipster congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said "Congress has lost its way" and described the farm bill as "reverse Robin Hood legislation that steals food from the poor."...

… The bill will cost nearly a trillion dollars over ten years. But, considering the bill itself is 702 pages long, the bill will cost about $1.4 billion per page. If that doesn’t garner the attention of taxpayers, there was something else that bothered at least one member of the House today—how settling on cutting $8 billion of waste could be a called “compromise” between a $40 billion House cut and a $4 billion Senate cut. …

A provision requiring members of Congress and the administration to disclose what crop insurance subsidies they receive was quietly dropped from the farm bill that the House passed on Wednesday. Section 11001 of the House-passed farm bill had a provision that “requires disclosure (by name) of the amount of crop insurance assistance received by Members of Congress, Cabinet Secretaries, and members of their immediate families.” That provision was taken out in closed-door conference negotiations before the bill was released on Monday. The bill cleared the House in less than 72 hours, before many lawmakers had a chance to review it,...

Proving that neither party really wants to do anything about escalating costs of anything, in typical D.C. compromise action, the House Passes $956B Farm Bill in a bipartisan vote. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) all voted for the bill. Democrats are howling over minuscule cuts in SNAP (food stamps). For example, an inane headline on the Daily Koz reads House passes food stamp-slashing farm bill. Supposedly there will be $8.6 billion in devastating food stamp cuts. Even if that happens it is less than a 1% cut in an...

Subsidies: Former Indiana congressman (and now state governor) Mike Pence used to quip that he was 99% capitalist but 1% socialist, and that turns socialist "when it comes time to vote on a farm bill." At least he was honest. Just what is it about farm bills that make Republicans abandon their principles of limited government and fiscal restraint? The sad answer: Farm bills are classic examples of Republican pork delivered to their own voters. The $1 trillion bill that will be voted on this week is another big pail of slop. It includes subsidies for corn, cotton, wool, sugar,...

A House plan to make major cuts to food stamps would be scaled back under a bipartisan agreement on a massive farm bill, a near end to a more than two-year fight that has threatened to hurt rural lawmakers in an election year. The measure announced Monday by the House and Senate Agriculture committees preserves food stamp benefits for most Americans who receive them and continues generous subsidies for farmers. The House was expected to vote on the bill Wednesday, with the Senate following shortly after. The compromise was expected to cut food stamps by about $800 million a year,...

Members of Congress have been alerted that a deal on the $1 trillion farm bill, stalled for the last three years, could come on Monday, allowing for a House floor vote next week. The alert went out from the House Agriculture Committee to members of the farm bill conference committee requesting that they return to town by Monday for action on the stalled legislation. "Conversations are ongoing and we remain optimistic that we can reach agreement in time to be on the floor next week," the alert stated. It said that Monday could feature a conference meeting to vote on...

The political soap opera over the farm bill is wrapping up, albeit with little substantive reform, though the drama wouldn't be complete without one last meltdown. Some of the House-Senate negotiators are demanding new Soviet-style price controls for the U.S. milk industry, which could show up in your next grocery bill. A farm deal was expected last week but the conference committee stalled over a plan from Minnesota Democrat Collin Peterson to replace something called the Milk Income Loss Contract. Dairy producers are currently paid a direct cash subsidy every month in which milk prices fall below a target level,...

For Democrats especially, any talk about cutting billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is uncomfortable and certain to create internal strife. But negotiators on the farm bill believe they’ve found a way to make about $8 billion in savings from the program palatable for most Democrats. The key is eliminating a loophole that enables states to help some low-income residents with nominal subsidies to pay for their heating in the winter in order to trigger much higher food stamp benefits. Some states, such as New York, will make a $1 Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program payment to low-income...

Between 2008 and 2011, the U.S. government awarded roughly $6.12 million in federal farm subsidies to several groups in the Chicago area, including a charity owned by Louis Farrakhan’s The Nation of Islam, according to a report released by government watchdog group Open the Books. BUSINESS WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR HOW MANY FARM SUBSIDIES ARE GOING TO GROUPS IN…THE CITY OF CHICAGO — INCLUDING ONE ASSOCIATED WITH LOUIS FARRAKHAN Dec. 9, 2013 11:00pm Becket Adams SHARE Related:Louis Farrakhan Between 2008 and 2011, the U.S. government awarded roughly $6.12 million in federal farm subsidies to several groups in the Chicago area, including a charity...

Throughout the history of the country, Congress has done some pretty dumb things and their recent abysmal approval ratings shows that the American public is losing faith. Not to say it’s an institution built on imprudent thoughts and actions. No. In reality it’s a venerable institution responsible for some of the most important legal, social and political advancements in modern history. But it’s hasn’t always been smooth sailing. For example, Congress once earmarked $50,000 in taxpayer money to support a museum honoring mules? Congress also spent $1.9 million on a Center for Public Service that would eventually honor a member...

The future of state laws that regulate everything from the size of a hen’s cage to the safe consumption of Gulf oysters may be at stake as farm bill negotiators work to resolve a long-simmering fight between agriculture and animal welfare interests. The House Agriculture Committee added language to its version of the farm bill earlier this year that says a state cannot impose certain production standards on agricultural products sold in interstate commerce. The provision, authored by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is aimed at a California law that will require all eggs sold in the state to come from...

To paraphrase a famous Mark Twain quote, suppose you passed a farm bill. And suppose you passed a food stamp bill. But I repeat myself. Hard as it may be to believe, 80 percent of the farm bill being hammered out by the Senate and the House of Representatives is made up not of agriculture programs, but of food stamps. And if that sounds upside down to you, you clearly don’t live “inside the Beltway,” where Orwellian logic is the order of the day. Why are food stamps rolled into the legislation? They’re included “purely from a political perspective,” Sen....