Farm Bill Shame
(posted by Angelica)
This is just nuts…nuts. In a world with skyrocketing agricultural commodity prices, congress wants to push through a $300 billion farm bill filled with juicy nuggets of pork like subsidies for racehorse breeders and $5 billion in direct payment to farmers whether they need it or not. Most of it is going to megafarms of course.
Shame on Obama and Clinton and the congressional Democrats (and about half the Republicans) for supporting this bill. For once, McCain and Bush are right on.
When Bush’s presidential veto is our last best hope that sanity will prevail over pork-barrel madness from a Democratic congress, I despair.
Agriculture Secretary Ed Shafer said flatly Thursday that President Bush will veto the farm bill, setting up an election-year confrontation that could sorely test the loyalties of rural Republicans.“I have visited face to face with our president and he was direct and clear,” Schafer said. “The president will veto this bill.”
Meeting with reporters at his department, the secretary was openly disdainful of new income caps in the farm bill, which seek to bar wealthy individuals from receiving direct payment subsidies. “Is there even one farm that would be removed from the program with these taxpayer-supported payouts?” Schafer asked in a mocking tone.
Budget gimmicks disguise as much as $10 billion in excess spending in the bill over the next decade, Schafer said, and he bluntly accused the authors of having “done a disservice to farmers and ranchers and importantly the taxpayers across this great land.”
But beyond the tough words, it is still an open question as to how far the administration will go to pressure Republicans to fall in line if the Democratic Congress should attempt to override a Bush veto.
Update: The bulk of this post was written before our recent server issues. Since then, the bill passed the house with a veto-proof majority and looks to cruise through the senate.