It looks as though the more people talk about change in Washington, the more things depressingly stay the same. The House overrode President Bush’s veto last night with an impressive majority (316 to 108 ) on the 2007 US Farm Bill. The Democrats are talking about feeding the poor and self-sufficiency, while the Republicans are (suddenly) taking the fiscally conservative opposition. Farm bills seem to have been part of the American landscape as long as most people can remember. Their wasteful subsidies skew crop prices and protect farmers from competing with world prices. It began as a means of fighting the Great Depression (wasteful then), but has evolved into an ever-hungry beast. Many rural folks and their politicians would have you believe that without subsidy, farmers wouldn’t be able to produce sufficient crops nor could they feed themselves or their families without it. That hogwash may have worked when food prices were low, but now is the worst time for farmers to have their pockets padded.
