Thread: Bush's Farm Bill Phoniness

this farm bill pisses me off to no end

Bush's Farm Bill Phoniness - TIME

When President Bush vetoed a ban on waterboarding and other forms of torture, congressional Republicans backed him. When Bush blocked an expansion of children's health insurance, GOP votes sustained his veto again. But now, after Bush vetoed a bloated farm bill that will lavish billions of dollars on wealthy farmers who are already enjoying record commodity prices, the President suddenly can't seem to rally his own party.

The House immediately voted to override by a 316-108 margin, and the Senate passed the original $289 billion bill in a similar 81-15 squeaker, so this is almost certain to be the second congressional veto override of the Bush presidency. And it's no coincidence that the first override salvaged a similarly bloated bill stuffed with pork-barrel water projects for the Army Corps of Engineers. GOP legislative leaders have made it clear they'll go to the mat for the President against the Democrats on almost anything, as long as it doesn't involve wasteful spending. "Some Republicans are arguing that the party needs to be fiscally conservative again," says one business lobbyist who's been fighting the farm bill. "They don't seem to be winning the argument."

It's not clear that Bush takes the argument too seriously, either. In recent months, he's gotten plenty of kudos for opposing the egregious farm bill, including some from me. But he had no problem signing an equally egregious farm bill in 2002, when Republicans controlled Congress. And deficit hawks, anti-hunger activists and other farm bill opponents say his White House has made little real effort to sway its caucus against the new farm bill, especially compared to its frenzied lobbying against the waterboarding ban and the health insurance expansion. Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino did not exactly promise a fight to the death Wednesday, issuing the following words of inspiration to farm bill opponents: "If you look at the vote count, I think an override is probably likely."

I have described in TIME how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and other Democratic leaders shafted the reformers in their caucus, siding with the forces of the status quo. But it's now clear that most Republican leaders have been just as complicit, despite all their small-government rhetoric. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio did oppose the original bill, but Minority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri and Conference Chair Adam Putnam of Florida voted yes, and there is no indication this time around of any heavy pressure on Capitol Hill to back the President and buck the influential farm lobby, which tends to be strongest in Republican-leaning rural states. Even former Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, the administration's leading voice against the bill until he resigned last year to run for Senate in Nebraska, said this week that he would have voted for the final version of the legislation.

It's true that the final version does have some changes from the original bill I called "bad agricultural, fiscal and environmental policy; bad water, energy, land and health policy, and bad foreign policy to boot." It attempts to eliminate subsidies to dead farmers, as well as former farmers whose fields are now subdivisions. It trims by about 1% the scandalous "direct payments" that selected farmers receive for doing nothing in particular. It supposedly limits subsidies to farm couples who clear less than $1.5 million in annual profits, down from the previous limit of $2.5 million, although the limits are unlikely to affect too many farmers who know decent accountants. And while it does nothing to reverse the nation's woefully misguided plunge into biofuels, it will encourage a slight shift in incentives from corn ethanol, which is an ecological disaster, towards cellulosic ethanol, which should be somewhat less pernicious if it becomes commercially viable.

But most of the changes slipped into the final legislation have made it even worse, like a tax break for the owners of thoroughbred horses, a sop to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. There's a new revenue insurance program that would provide windfalls to farmers should commodity prices drop below their current stratospheric levels. The conference committee rammed through big cuts in wetlands and grasslands conservation efforts, and slashed an international food aid program nearly 90%. And of course, no new farm bill is ever complete without new giveaways to the sugar industry, including a curious promise for the government to buy its surplus product in order to resell it at a massive loss to ethanol plants that can't really use refined sugar. "That one just defies all sense of logic," says Joel Velasco, a lobbyist for Brazilian sugar producers.

That's true of most of the bill. At a time of record farm profits, it will shower the vast majority of its subsidies on the vast industrial operations that make the most money, consume the most water and energy, produce the most pesticide and nutrient pollution, grow the most fattening foods, and end up using their handouts to buy out the small family farmers the bill's supporters are always rhapsodizing about. It will also violate international trade agreements, subjecting the 99% of the American economy that isn't agricultural to retaliation that could jack up consumer prices and reduce jobs.

To his credit, John McCain will vote to sustain Bush's veto of the farm bill, just as he backed Bush on the water bill; Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton supported both oinkers. Democrats will surely attack McCain for following in Bush's footsteps, just as he's pledged to extend Bush's tax cuts and Bush's war. But if the president really wanted to rein in wasteful spending, he probably wouldn't have presided over a seven-year expansion of government. And if he really wanted to stop the farm bill, he'd probably line up the kind of Republican backing he has on his tax cuts and the war.