The farm bill
Evansville Courier Press, November 14, 2007

The Issue: Bush threatens to veto latest versions. Our View: He should have done it five years ago.

President Bush is threatening to do something he should have done five years ago — veto the farm bill.

He took office promising to end the costly, wasteful — and, according to the World Trade Organization, very likely illegal — system of subsidies and payments. But faced with the power of the farm lobby and coming elections, he docilely backed down.

Now the farm bill is up for renewal, and the response of the Senate and House has been more of the same. But Bush has threatened to veto the House version of that bill, and last week acting Agriculture Secretary Charles Conner said he would recommend that Bush veto the Senate version if it passes.

The Senate is working on its version this week and could act at any time.

The Senate bill calls for spending $288 billion with much of it in subsidies for crops such as corn, cotton, wheat, rice and sugar that U.S. agribusiness produces to excess.

The farmers are hardly hurting. Corn farmers in particular got a windfall from the subsidies and tax breaks for ethanol.

The attempts at curbing the excesses of the farm payments show how distorted the system has become. The Senate bill would limit payments to non-farmers whose income is more than $750,000 a year. The House bill would ban payments to those making more than $1 million a year. Why are these people entitled to that kind of money from average taxpayers?

The farm bill tends to get loaded up with programs — food stamps, conservation — to make it palatable to non-farm-state lawmakers. And that means Bush could have trouble making his veto stick.

This Congress has shown little interest in reform. It brushed past a promising alternative by Sens. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., that would have replaced generous subsidies for a few crops with government-underwritten insurance for all farmers.

Lugar, a farm owner himself, has long fought a losing battle to reform government aid to agriculture. Back in 1996, he championed the Freedom to Farm Act, landmark reform legislation aimed at changing the way Washington deals with agriculture. It reduced government control of farming — which farmers welcomed — but in exchange it reduced government aid to farmers — something they didn't welcome.

Alas, the freedom was fleeting, and the reforms barely had a chance to survive. By 2002, more generous subsidies and bailouts were back, this time with Bush's support.

Still, it is good that the president is now, belatedly, taking an interest in the farm bill, but the time to do it was five years ago when, unlike the present, he had political capital to spend.

Even so, upon passage of the House version, Lugar said: "It will send more money to a few select farmers, while continuing to ignore the vast majority of American farmers. The president is justified in stating that he would veto this legislation."

Ditto.