“Bush Is Said to Seek Sharp Cuts in Subsidy Payments to Farmers,” by Robert Pear, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/politics/06budget.html, 6 February 2005 (from The Corner).

Great, great, great, great news

WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 – President Bush will seek deep cuts in farm and commodity programs in his new budget and in a major policy shift will propose overall limits on subsidy payments to farmers, administration officials said Saturday.

Such limits would help reduce the federal budget deficit and would inject market forces into the farm economy, the officials said.

…

Mr. Bush would set a firm overall limit of $250,000 on subsidies that can now exceed $1 million in some cases.

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Mr. Bush’s farm proposal found support from some people who frequently criticize his policies.

Kenneth Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy group, said the proposal would reduce payments to big agribusiness operations. The savings, he said, would ease pressure on Congress to cut conservation programs financed in the same legislation.

…

Agriculture Department officials said Mr. Bush’s proposals would cut federal payments to farmers by $587 million, or about 5 percent, next year and would save $5.7 billion in the coming decade. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to upstage the release of the president’s budget, scheduled for Monday.

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Farm subsidies have been a major issue in global trade talks, as poor farmers in the developing world demand that the United States and other wealthy countries cut back subsidies for their domestic producers.

Efforts to cap farm payments have produced odd alliances. Fiscal conservatives like the Heritage Foundation have joined some environmental groups and family farmers in the Midwest in supporting stricter limits. Opponents include the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest farm organization, as well as many commodity groups and politicians of both parties from rice and cotton states.

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The White House proposal is a vindication of sorts for Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, who has advocated “reasonable payment limits” for three decades.

“When 10 percent of the nation’s farmers receive 60 percent of the payments, it erodes public confidence in federal farm programs,” said Mr. Grassley, who describes himself as the only family farmer in the Senate. “Unlimited farm payments have placed upward pressure on land prices and contributed to overproduction and lower commodity prices, driving many family farmers off the farm.”

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But Brian M. Riedl, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, said stricter payment limits were needed because farm subsidies had become “America’s largest corporate welfare program.”

Yes! President George W. Bush: brining natural liberty for the first industry of every nation. If he can end farm welfare, it will be one of his many great achievements.