The Senate narrowly rejected an attempt to limit annual payments to farmers Thursday, frustrating lawmakers who had hoped that this year’s multibillion-dollar farm bill would scale back the government’s massive subsidy programs.
The bipartisan amendment to the $286 billion bill would have limited overall farm payments to $250,000 yearly per married couple, down from the current limit of $360,000. It would have also attempted to close loopholes that allow some farmers to collect higher payments and required that farmers be “actively engaged” to receive subsidies.
“We have a federal farm program to help family farmers make it through tough times,” said North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat who sponsored the amendment with Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. “It was not created to send multimillion-dollar payments to giant corporate farms, or payments to people who haven’t been near a farm in decades.”
The corporate AG welfare is insane! You’ve got payments heading to Manhattan, payments in the heart of Dallas and DC. Payments to dead farmers, payments to Monsanto and Dow chemical. I don’t want my tax dollars paying Tyson so it can raise chickens cheap. I don’t want my tax dollars going to Monsanto and it’s genetic monstrosities. The USDA has been so taken over by big corporate AG that it’s no longer a farming organization. It’s all about strangling and snuffing out the small farms that practice sustainable AG. The subsidies should be limited. If a person or business is making a million a year he shouldn’t be getting a free gift of our tax dollars.
http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/
You can follow some of the money here. It’s incredible.
Sue,
This is yet another case of a special interest (in this case, the farm lobby) extending its undue financial influence over members of Congress in exchange for favorable legislation.
Without real campaign finance reform and term limits, this cycle of legal bribery will continue in perpetuity. Thank you for the resource on this abuse of taxpayer dollars.