Budget Continues Massive Farm Subsidies for Rich & Unproductive-Workers Lose Again.

[terisan]

Among the audacious proposals in President Obama’s budget was a plan to save more than $9.7 billion over a decade by putting strict limits on farm subsidies that are disbursed regardless of market conditions or even whether the land is actively farmed.

But Mr. Obama’s grand ambitions have run into political reality

The budget outlines approved by the House and Senate on Thursday night do not include limits on farm subsidies at all, and even champions of change say that if the president’s plan can be revived, it will have to be scaled back so significantly that the savings could amount to just several hundred million dollars.

Some of the fiercest critics of farm subsidy programs say the new administration overreached in offering a proposal that could have cut off payment not just to large corporate agribusinesses, but also to medium-sized family farms that might not even be profitable, setting off a huge alarm in the powerful farm lobby.

The White House plan would have prohibited so-called direct payments to farms whose annual gross receipts exceeded $500,000 — a large sum on the surface, but one that did not take account of whether those receipts yielded any real profits.

Within days, the National Farmers Union, which represents roughly 250,000 farm families, forcefully denounced the president’s plan and urged Congress to oppose it. The group’s board also raised the issue at a meeting with officials at the White House

While Mr. Obama’s Democratic allies on Capitol Hill adopted much of his budget template, the farm subsidy limits never got off the ground.

In the House, farm-state lawmakers told the Budget Committee chairman, Representative John M. Spratt Jr., Democrat of South Carolina, that they would not support any budget plan that tinkered with hard-fought agreements they struck in passing last year’s omnibus farm bill.

And in the Senate, Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, chairman of the Budget Committee and an ardent defender of agricultural interests in his state, quickly discarded the president’s proposal.

snip-----------------

Looks like the farm section of the bill was written with a poison pill--this game has gone on for decades-Farm Welfare benefits agribusiness and a bunch of freeloaders. It would be easy to write a bill for those "small family farms'" the Congress always starts bleating about and using as an excuse to funnel money to mega corporations and
mega millionaires.

[Patchuli]

1. Well fuckety fuck fuck!!!

I don't know what else to say about such egregious behavior...other than, it's got to stop.