I just have to give this a thread of its own. I am flabbergasted. hate for the President is

[JustAnotherGen]

80. I hate that we had to

Subsidize crop insurance. That's what it came down to. . .

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/09/republicans-we-were-too-nice-to-the-hungry.html

Republicans hate domestic spending, but their hatred is not completely indiscriminate. Some programs offend them more, and others less. The general pattern is that social programs offend Republicans to the degree that they benefit the poor, sick, or otherwise unfortunate. The struggle over the farm bill is not the biggest policy dispute in American politics, but it is the one that most clearly reveals the priorities and ideological identity of the contemporary GOP.

The farm bill traditionally combines agriculture subsidies (which hands out subsidies to people on the arbitrary basis that the business they own produces food as opposed to some other goods or services) with food stamps (which hands out subsidies to people on the highly nonarbitrary basis that they’re poor enough to likely have trouble scraping together regular meals). Conservative Republicans revolted against the normally automatic passage, insisting that the cuts to food stamps — $20 billion — did not slice deeply enough. Last night the House rectified its failure by cutting food stamps by $40 billion.

The putative rationale for the food-stamp cuts is that eligibility standards have loosened, or that it encourages sloth. Jonathan Cohn makes quick work of these claims, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes long, detailed work of them. Click on those links if you want a blow-by-blow refutation. The upshot is that food stamps are a meager subsidy, of less than $1.40 per meal, for people either stuck in very low paid jobs or unable to find work at all. Their cost has increased because the recession has increased the supply of poor, desperate people. Republicans have offered specious comparisons to welfare reform, but that law both offered funds for job training and was passed in a full-employment economy. Neither of these conditions holds true of the GOP’s food-stamp cuts, whose only significant result would be the first-order effect of making very poor people hungrier.

CNN reported last night that Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, a Republican supporter of the bill, received a daily meal allowance of $127.41, or 91 times the average daily food-stamp benefit. Lucas is also notable as a recipient of the agriculture subsidies his committee doles out: He and his wife have collected more than $40,000 worth.

Direct Link to the House Agriculture Committee:
https://agriculture.house.gov/bill/agricultural-act-2014


Bill Summary - http://agriculture.house.gov/sites/republicans.agriculture.house.gov/files/pdf/legislation/AgriculturalActSummary.pdf

Repeals Direct Payments and limits producers to risk management tools that offer protection when they suffer significant losses.
•Limits on payments are reduced, eligibility rules are tightened, and means tests are streamlined to make farm programs more accountable.
•Strengthens crop insurance, a successful public/private partnership that ensures farmers invest in their own risk management.
•Provides historic reforms to dairy policy by repealing outdated and ineffective dairy programs. Offers producers a new, voluntary, margin protection program without imposing government-mandated supply controls.
•Reauthorizes and strengthens livestock disaster assistance.
•Supports small businesses and beginning farmers and ranchers with training and access to capital.


And what really sucks about this? There is now zero transparency about who 'wins'. You know? Like all of those Republican legislators from rural districts - oh like - I don't know - the Dishonorable Frank Mr. Lucas with his $40K in handouts. And I highly doubt small family farms and upstarts are going to receive a thin red cent from this.

The Republicans will do anything they can to cheat me when I pay my taxes.