OK, so I read this USATODAY Op/Ed on Yahoo.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=742&e=1&u=/usatoday/20050223/cm_usatoday/wealthygrowersnotsmallfarmersharvesthandoutsSeems like Bush is, uncharacteristically, doing something that actually makes good sense.
Any thoughts/caveats?
Thanks in advance!
ARTICLE EXCERPT:
It is fraught with abuse and does little to assist the "family farmers" who are supposedly the program's beneficiaries. The top 10% of recipients - mostly huge agribusinesses - collect almost 70% of the payments.
Far from helping small farmers, these corporations buy them out - and then qualify for even larger subsidies.
More than 90% of farm subsidies go to the growers of such politically favored staples as wheat, corn, cotton, soybeans and rice. Because payments increase as a farmer plants more, these handouts encourage farmers to grow surplus crops. Other farmers are paid not to grow crops as a way to conserve the soil.
Bush's 2006 budget contains these reasonable but overly modest proposals:
• Cut all farm payments by 5%.
• Limit price-support subsidies to $250,000 per individual, down from the current $360,000 cap.
• Require subsidized farms to purchase crop insurance rather than expect the government to bail them out if bad weather lowers their profits.
• Close loopholes to ensure that only those eligible for subsidies receive them.
Bush says his plan would save $5.7 billion over the next decade. That's not much, considering that subsidies cost taxpayers $131 billion over the past decade, an average of about $450 from every person in the country. And it wouldn't make much of a dent in record federal deficits in the neighborhood of $400 billion a year. But at least it's a start.