High Food Prices Don’t Slow Farm Subsidies
May 16th, 2008 by
Editor: Scott
The Wall Street Journal has a piece that shows that even though food prices are at all time highs, farms are still a great way to spread around some political love:
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…
