FARM BILL FAILINGS

Congress has demonstrated that if a huge giveaway bill is packed with enough earmarks and pork, members will give the farm lobby almost everything it wants. That describes the $300 billion dollar farm bill that was passed with majorities big enough to override the president’s veto.

Good features of the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008 include urgently needed money for food stamps, food banks, school lunches, and research and conservation program funding. For distressed counties in Maine and other northern New England states, it provides financing for the Northern Border Regional Commission, which will invest $30 million a year for economic development and job creation.

But the omnibus bill also freezes into place for five years the exorbitant subsidies and handouts to the nation’s farmers, who are already enjoying soaring corn and wheat prices and incomes 50 percent above their 10-year average. Instead of sharply cutting back payments to the wealthiest farms, the bill permits farm couples with combined incomes up to $1.5 million to remain eligible.

Among the special favors is a tax break for racehorse breeders inserted by the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Maine’s Democratic Party issued a statement rebuking Sen. Susan Collins for voting “against the interest of Mainers – and against every other member of the state’s congressional delegation.” Sen. Collins, one of only 15 senators who voted “no,” promptly quoted a New York Times editorial headlined “A disgraceful farm bill.”

Her statement said, correctly: “The farm bill contains massive, wasteful taxpayer subsidies for large agribusinesses in the Midwest and South at the expense of family farms in the Northeast.” She added that, while she supported increased funding for food stamps and other nutrition and conservation provisions, as well as increased federal oversight to prevent manipulation of electronic energy markets, “as a whole, this farm bill represents wasteful spending and the wrong priorities.”

A Washington Post article Wednesday said that subsidies to corn farmers alone could reach $10 billion a year if prices, which are now unusually high, return to more normal levels.

Congress is unlikely to support a presidential veto, which would have allowed it to correct flaws in the legislation. The Environmental Defense Fund has a good list of what the bill should have included: increased funding for conservation programs, genuine reductions in farm subsidies and real limits rather than token changes in income requirements for subsidy eligibility. This would have made the bill less costly and addressed real agricultural problems.

The other three members of Maine’s congressional delegation voted for the 2008 bill because of its benefits to Maine, such as increased support for food programs and the creation of the Northern Border Commission. Sen. Collins supported these measures but chose to go the way of a more sensible and economically sound farm support policy.