Posted by
Katie Favazza on Thursday, May 15, 2008 11:05:27 AM
The Farm Bill is likely to pass today.
The Heritage Foundation has a succinct post up, calling the farm bill "everything that is wrong with Washington."
Update: According to
The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste,
H.R. 2419 fails in the following ways:
- It provides little
improvement to means testing or payment limits. Married couples with
an adjusted gross income of $1.5 million will still receive subsidies.
The payment limit level of $360,000 was not reduced.
- It
continues to dole out $5.2 billion annually in direct payments to
individuals (many of whom are no longer farming) without any regard to
prices or income. These direct payments, 60 percent of which go to the
wealthiest 10 percent of recipients, were created in 1996 and were
supposed to phase out by 2002.
- It
creates a new “permanent disaster fund” worth $3.8 billion - a disaster
for taxpayers, most farmers, and the environment. This will encourage
planting on disaster-prone land, plus most payments will go to the same
producers already receiving the bulk of the direct payments.
- It
increases the support price for sugar, reserves 85 percent of the U.S.
market for domestic producers and creates a new sugar ethanol program.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this new program will
cost taxpayers $1.3 billion over ten years, although the real cost is
likely to exceed $4 billion. The consumer costs of the sugar program
will exceed $2 billion annually.
- It
adds earmarks such as $5 million for grants to broadcasting systems
inserted by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), $3 million for Delta Health
Alliance Grants inserted by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), and $1 million
for the National Sheep and Goat Industry Improvement Center inserted by
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.).