Farm bill unfair to the little guy
Fort Wayne Journal Gazette , November 4, 2007

For 30 years Sen. Richard Lugar has politely and cerebrally made the case that opening the spigot of taxpayer money and thoroughly watering the U.S. agriculture industry is misguided.

Politeness hasn’t worked. We still have a program that is neither fair nor logical, and Congress is about to obligate taxpayers for five more years of this multibillion-dollar idiocy.

It subsidizes some, but not all, crops.

It makes payments to the ownersof farmland – not necessarily the farmers – which means rich city dwellers and Purdue University collect hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It makes payments on the basis of who got money in the past, not which farms or crops were devastated by nasty weather or lousy market prices.

It encourages giant corporate farms that do nothing to keep alive the romance of the family farm and rural-town values (whatever they are). In fact, rural America is worse off now – in income and population size – than at any time in U.S. history, except maybe during the Depression.

It runs contrary to global trade rules and has positioned the U.S. for sanctioned retaliation from Brazil and elsewhere.

In short, it is a pathetic excuse for national policy. If we want to make sure U.S. agriculture never goes the way of, say, the auto industry, why not keep all farmers afloat?

Lugar has been asking these sorts of questions for years and has been brushed aside.

It’s time for a new tactic so Lugar’s not rolled again this week when he tries to get the Senate to replace the direct-payment subsidy system with a program to insure up to 85 percent of a farmer’s income. It wouldn’t cost the farmer a dime; taxpayers would pay the premiums. And it wouldn’t be restricted to corn, soybean, cotton and some grain farmers; all farmers would be insured.

This is not the best idea in the world; a better one would be to guarantee the income of journalists or janitors. But the crop insurance program is a far sight more equitable than the current giveaway.

The system purrs along because of lawmakers’ inertia and the bluster of the agriculture lobby. It’s up to Lugar to crack through and give his colleagues who aren’t in thrall to the big-crop lobby a reason to care.

Logic won’t do it. Shame and mockery might.

What I’d like to see on the Senate floor next week is a glitzy chart with two figures for each state: the number of farmers and landowners who get direct payments and the number of people who rely on food stamps. (Lugar wants to take $1 billion of the subsidy money and feed more hungry people, especially kids.)

“Sens. Boxer and Feinstein,” Lugar could say to the Democratic lawmakers, “did you know that there are 11,327 California farmers who, on average, get $185 million a year in payments whether they need them or not? And that 1,999,656 Californians are so poor that they need food stamps to keep their families alive?”

He could then reiterate the many ways the subsidy program is a welfare package for the well off.

“Sen. Coburn,” he could say to the Oklahoma Republican who ties the Senate in knots with his attacks on individual earmarks and other wasteful spending, “did you know that the average farm household earns $52,000 a year and that the average non-farm household earns $43,000? Or that 62 farm businesses in Mississippi will receive more than $1 million over the next five years if we stick with the status quo?”

Lugar needs to shed his Mr. Civility of the Universe crown and go on a noogie spree:

Make liberals squirm over their choice to pour cash into the pockets of well-off landowners and corporate farms instead of expanding food stamps or conservation. Demand answers from fiscal conservatives who bluster at Bridges to Nowhere and Woodstock Museums but give this boondoggle a pass.