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Junkie
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Subsidies, Windfall Profits - Just not oil.
Here is an editorial in today's WSJ. It appears the folks in Washington just can not stop politically pandering. I can not figure out why tax breaks for farmers are o.k. at a time when they are making record profits and food prices are going higher (and for some third world nations there are food shortages) yet they constantly gripe about the oil industry while not letting them do their job. I guess we can expect more of this in the years to come under Democratic Party leadership and as Republican give up the fight.
Even those of you who hate Bush have to support him vetoing this bill, right?
Quote:
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
May 14, 2008; Page A20
We can't wait to hear how Members of Congress explain their vote this week for the new $300 billion farm bill. At a time when Americans are squeezed at the grocery store, they will now see more of their taxes flow to the very farmers profiting from these high food prices.
This year farm income is expected to reach an all-time high of $92.3 billion, an increase of 56% in two years, making growers perhaps the most undeserving welfare recipients in American history. But that won't stop this bill from passing the House and Senate by wide margins. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was once a farm subsidy skeptic, but she now has some 30 freshman Democrats from battleground rural districts to protect. So more than $10 billion a year in giveaways to agribusiness is a necessary taxpayer sacrifice to keep her majority.
Ms. Pelosi calls the bill "real reform," which is like calling Lindsay Lohan born again. For example: The bill perpetuates the so-called Hurricane Katrina gambit that allows farmers to lock in price-support payments at the lowest possible market price, and then sell their crops later at the highest possible price, and then pocket the high price and a payment from the government for the difference between the two. They in effect get paid twice for the same bushel of wheat.
A bigger scam is the new income limit to qualify for subsidies. Mr. Bush sought a $200,000 annual income cap, but Congress can't bring itself to go below $750,000. Even that is a farce, because it doesn't include loan programs and disaster payments, and it allows spouses to qualify for payments too. The White House and liberal reformers calculate that farm owners with clever accountants can have incomes of up to $2.5 million and still get a taxpayer handout.
Several weeks ago, Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin was asked by the Des Moines Register how many farmers in Iowa would be excluded under the new income cap. His answer: "two or three." On tax policy Mr. Harkin and his fellow Democrats talk endlessly about soaking the rich, but on farm policy they favor soaking the middle class to pay the rich.
Nearly every crop – corn, wheat, sugar – has won increases in subsidy payments even as farm commodity prices explode. (See nearby chart.) Of the 17 most subsidized commodities, only rice and cotton will get a slight reduction in payments, while the bill extends the farm welfare net to lentils, chick peas, fruits and vegetables, and even organic foods. There are new programs for Kentucky horse breeders and Pacific Coast salmon fishermen, and your tax dollars will help finance the dairy industry's "Got Milk?" campaign. Oh, and you still don't even have to farm to cash in. Hundreds of millions of dollars will go to landowners based on their "historical planting average" even if they haven't planted a seed in years.
And once again the big sugar plantation owners in Florida walk away with the sweetest deal: Big Sugar bagged an increase in price supports and a guarantee of 85% of the domestic sugar market at these guaranteed prices. So taxpayers are on the hook for buying surplus domestically produced sugar at 23 cents a pound and selling it for ethanol for closer to three cents a pound.
If you wonder why urban Democrats would vote for this rural giveaway, the answer is they have been bought off with roughly $10 billion in extra funding for food stamps and nutrition welfare programs. Someone should tell them that their constituents might not need this cash if the farm bill didn't help keep food prices high. And let's not forget the Blue Dog Democrats who are supposed to be spending hawks. The farm bill busts the budget caps by at least $10 billion, but the Blue Dogs get $5.9 billion in handouts for their districts. So they will put their fiscal sermonizing on hold and vote "aye."
Mr. Bush is promising a veto, to his credit, but the White House expects even many Republicans to vote to override. The House GOP swears it has learned its spending lesson after 2006. Yet House Minority Leader John Boehner, who opposes the bill himself, isn't rallying GOP opposition. Perhaps there are too many Republicans who crave the handouts too.
Meanwhile, John McCain says "I would veto that bill" and will vote against it in the Senate. Strangely silent is Barack Obama. A major theme of his campaign is to battle corporate special interests in Washington on behalf of the "middle class." Here is one of his first tests, and it'll be fascinating to see if he sides with the well-funded commodity lobby over consumers and taxpayers.
In this election year, both parties are fighting to win the farm vote. But even in Chicago and New Jersey, it doesn't cost $300 billion to buy an election.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1210...w_and_outlooks
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"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch."
"It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions on vegetarianism while the wolf is of a different opinion."
"If you live among wolves you have to act like one."
"A lady screams at the mouse but smiles at the wolf. A gentleman is a wolf who sends flowers."
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