Monday, July 30, 2007
Editorial: Subsidy system stuck in a time warp
Politics may prevent a long-needed reform of the $21 billion farm subsidy program.
From the RoundTable blog
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Congressional Democrats are more interested in protecting vulnerable farm-state incumbents than in trimming billions of wasteful spending from the farm subsidy program.
Despite a brutal series of stories in The Washington Post that laid bare the waste and abuse of the multi-billion dollar subsidy system, it appears poised to survive largely intact in the 2007 Farm Bill.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is backing a bill advanced by the Agriculture Committee -- whose members' districts received more than 40 percent of all farm subsidies from 2003 to 2005 -- because she fears freshmen Democrats in rural districts could have a hard time winning re-election if subsidies are cut.
President Bush is threatening to veto the bill in its current form.
"The bill put forth by the committee misses a major opportunity," said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. "The time really is right for reform in farm policy."
Johanns is right. Prices for the major subsidized crops -- corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and wheat -- are very high, and not expected to drop.
Of the $21 billion in farm payments last year, 92 percent went to those five crops. Some wealthy farmers made millions from selling their crops, and millions more in subsidy payments.
As Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said, "If we can't reform these farm programs at this moment in our history, we will never be able to."
But the Bush administration is hardly a poster child for reform. Bush supports keeping direct payments made to farmers even when they are selling crops at high prices.
The subsidy system is stuck in a time warp. It needs a complete overhaul to reflect modern agricultural practices and needs.
Abuses reported in The Post include $1.3 billion in subsidies to people who aren't even farmers, including $490,000 in checks to a Houston heart surgeon for land that hadn't been farmed in at least a decade.
The 2007 Farm Bill is the perfect vehicle for major reform, but it appears that politics will win instead.
That's a $21 billion shame.
