Senate Rewards Millionaire Farmers, Again

The U.S. Senate, last week not only caved in to Republicans on the energy bill by jettisoning renewable energy requirements and restoring oil company subsidies, but also caved in to lobbyists on the farm bill by rejecting a proposal to limit subsidies to the richest of the rich.

With the Senate's passage of the farm bill, as the Corpus-Christi Caller-Times put it, "Now the way is all but clear for the passage of a $286 billion farm bill that is again loaded with hundreds of millions of dollars for corporations and for millionaire farmers under the guise of helping small family farms stay afloat in tough times."

Virtually every public interest group, whether supporting rural America, school nutrition or environmental concerns, opposes these subsidies. President Bush, no stranger to measures that help the rich, opposes these farm subsidies.

But there's a lot of money in it, not only for millionaire farmers and corporate agribusiness, but for the decision-makers whose campaigns run on that same money. The good news is that more than half the Senate voted in favor of limiting the big subsidies. The bad news is that leaders couldn't find 60 rational voters to ensure passage.

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