NYT: (GOP Inflicts) More Pain for the Working Poor

[PETRUS]

10. Bad logic.

It makes little sense to evaluate the current farm bill vs. previous expenditures. It makes sense to evaluate it vs. current needs.

Not only is this bill cutting essential funding, it includes questionable subsidies. For example:

-The Lucas-Peterson farm bill would give every big subsidized grower a raise in the form of higher price guarantees for their crops – at a time when large commercial farms have average household incomes of more than $200,000 a year and net farm income has nearly doubled in recent years. The largest 10 percent of subsidized growers collect roughly three-fourths of federal farm subsidies, so the Lucas-Peterson farm bill will give mega-farms even more tax dollars to drive out small family farmers.

-Right now, farm businesses can get unlimited insurance subsidies. As a result, 26 of them collected more than $1 million each in 2011 and more than 10,000 growers collected more than $100,000 each. Rather than place reasonable limits on crop insurance, the Lucas-Peterson proposal actually expands insurance subsidies – at a cost of more than $9 billion! Reasonable reforms such as payment limits, means testing and administrative reforms – which are applied to SNAP but not crop insurance – could save taxpayers more than $20 billion.

(From http://www.ewg.org/agmag/2012/07/top-ten-reason-to-reject-the-house-farm-bill/)