Rob Wittman does it again!

By “It,” of course, we mean betray supporters of limited government by voting for a ridiculously overstuffed “farm bill” (Jim Bowden, who was my preferred candidate in what I now call the Night of the Long Dull Spoons).

Yours truly has been so distracted with work lately that I actually missed this.  Rest assured, Tim Watson picked up the torch (actually, we time-share that torch, I think):

The United Nations and the World Trade Organization have increasingly gotten annoyed at the massive subsidies provided by the United States Government (The WaPo, different link).

Vote round-up provided by James Atticus Bowden at his blog:

Democrats — Boucher, Y; Moran, Y; Scott, Y.

Republicans — Drake, Y; Forbes, Y; Goodlatte, Y; Wittman, Y;

Fiscal Conservative Republicans – Goode, N;Cantor, N; Davis, Tom, N; Wolf, N.

Wolf, Goode and Cantor have farmers in their districts, yet they voted “No”. Good job, guys.

And the corporate welfare aspect:

Continues to subsidize millionaires. Cur­rently, all full-time farmers may be eligible for farm subsidies regardless of income (part-time farmers must earn less than $2.5 million annu­ally). President Bush reasonably proposed lim­iting farm subsidies to those who earn less than $200,000 a year.

Rather than follow that commonsense approach, the conference agreement reportedly rejects allfarmer income tests for the countercyclical and marketing loan subsidy programs and includes only a weak net farm income cap for direct pay­ments ($750,000 for single farmers and $1.5 million for married farmers after all business de­ductions). Direct payments would also be re­stricted to singles with non-farm incomes under $500,000 ($1 million for married couples).

That is not reform. Farmers with incomes in the millions of dollars would still be eligible for permanent subsidies. Farm subsidies would remain America’s largest corporate welfare pro­gram: Most subsidies would continue to go to large agribusinesses. President Bush is right to insist that farmers earning more than $200,000 per year no longer be eligible for subsidies.

One other thing Tim doesn’t mention is that the bill continues both the deplorable ethanol subsidy (althought it was “cut” to 45 cents a gallon – Reuters) and a 54 cent-a-gallon tariff on ethanol imports.  In other words, a lot more corn will go to this boondoggle instead of feeding poor Americans (wealthy Americans can still afford food at the resultant jacked-up prices), to say nothing of the rest of the world.

The president has promised to veto this monstrosity, and I sincerely hope he does.  In the meantime, I am now in the shocking position of finding my member of Congress to be worse than Tom Davis!!!