Change, unity and hope for the special interest farm bill

Jacob Sullom:

WE need to stand up to the special interests, bring Republicans and Democrats to gether and pass the farm bill immediately," Barack Obama declared last November. Weird words, since: the farm bill, which subsidizes an arbitrarily chosen section of the economy at the expense of taxpayers and consumers in general, is special-interest legislation by definition.

The latest version, which President Bush has promised to veto, includes tax breaks for racehorse owners, "marketing aid" for fruit and vegetable growers, research funding for organic farmers, added price supports for domestic sugar producers, increased subsidies for dairy farmers and a $170-million earmark for the salmon industry.

Less than a month ago, the Associated Press reported that "it's not a good year for a farm bill," what with surging food prices, record farm income and a tight federal budget. But in DC, the solution to wasteful, unjustified government spending is more wasteful, unjustified spending.

In response to fruit and vegetable farmers who've long complained about payments for other crops, the five-year, $300-billion bill expands subsidies while paying off the produce growers. In response to food-price inflation, it continues the price supports and ethanol subsidies that contribute to it while boosting spending on food stamps. It even manages to combine two kinds of farm folly in one program, requiring the government to protect domestic sugar producers by buying imported sugar and selling it at a loss to ethanol refiners.

The bill's supporters are bragging about a new rule that would bar payments to individual farmers earning more than $750,000 a year and couples earning more than $1.5 million. That modest change is expected to affect about 2,000 subsidy recipients, less than 1 percent of the total. But it highlights the extent to which farm subsidies are a welfare program for rich people.

Last summer, Obama's campaign boasted that he's for "reducing the number of multimillionaires who are eligible for farm-bill subsidies." It's a pretty sad state of affairs when self-styled reformers aspire merely to reduce taxpayer payments to multimillionaires.

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This new politics does not sound that different from the old politics. Voters who rejected Republicans because they were big spenders must feel so betrayed.