$307 billion farm bill heading to Pres Bush's desk

We should all be seriously concerned about how Congress continually goes about doing its business. If Congress isn't wastefully throwing money out the window using one earmark after another (money they didn't budget to spend), it's passing one bill after another with out-of-control spending. From my perspective, no "systems-analysis" is being performed to determine what will happen if what's being considered is passed and put into effect.

A classic case of this type of Congressional behavior involves the $307 Billion Farm Subsidy Bill recently passed by the Congress. Do rich corporate farmers really need $5 Billion in direct payments showered upon them? What exactly do those direct payments have to do with crop productivity, or in providing some form of safety net in case prices drop? I’m just baffled. It includes $93 million in tax breaks for horse breeders, $170 million in grants for the salmon industry and some back door funding that benefits only one Montana timber company (another one of those earmarks).

As I understand it, farm income is up significantly. Since the passing of the Energy Independence and Security Act, prices for corn are soaring! Congress should have taken a serious look at this bill and shaved more than just a mere 2% off the direct payments provision. Better yet, with record high farm income combined with a world food crisis, why didn't they just scrap the farming subsidies altogether, and reallocate that $5 Billion where we really need it, like on health care for veterans or education for kids?

If I look at the Farm Subsidy Bill along side the Energy Independence and Security Act, I'm not sure which is the fuel and which is the fire ... but I'm pretty sure that it's Congress I see who's standing there with the fan in hand, ready to make sure everything goes up in flame. Because systems-thinking is involved they fail to consider each bill’s impact on other areas of the economy. That's how we end up, for example, with the prices of food going through the roof. Higher corn prices result from biofuel mandates and subsidies, which encourage farmers to plant fewer acres of wheat and soybeans—which in turn raises prices for wheat and soybeans. In addition, corn is the chief feed grain for which producers of beef, poultry, and pork must pay higher prices which will be passed along to consumers. In 2006, a bushel of corn sold for just under $2; today it's nearly $6. And that doesn't take into consideration the rising price of gasoline impacting the transportation of goods to market or the decline in worth of US Currency worldwide.

Even Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer recognized the folly of this bill. Here’s what he said, “At a time of record farm income, Congress decided to further increase farm subsidy rates, qualify more people for taxpayer support, and move programs toward more government control." Bush has promised to veto the bill, but unfortunately, it looks like this spending monstrocity just might be veto-proof.