Michael Lissack has noted that farm subsidies "are the equivalent of giving every full-time subsidized farmer two new Mercedes-Benz automobiles each year. With the $260 billion the government and consumers have spent on farm subsidies since 1980, Uncle Sam could have bought every farm, barn and tractor in 33 states." Each year more than $500 million in crop price-supports go to farmers who have more than $100,000 a year in nonfarm income. Attempts to end payments to corporate farmers and wealthy people who take in more than $100,000 a year from completely different pursuits, cutting subsidies to doctors and lawyers who live on farms, have continually ended in failure. A legion of farm-state lawmakers and agricultural lobbyists promptly offer plausible arguments about why it's a bad idea. Price-support payments are not welfare payments for farmers they argue but part of a much broader na- tional food stabilization program. Price-support programs in tandem with government programs to reduce planting in times of crop surpluses stabilize farm incomes and encourage consistent planting in periods of good prices and bad. That evens out wild swings in food production and prices. End the payments for rich farmers the argument goes and they will simply opt out of the government programs entirely, plant as much as they can, drive down prices and thereby hurt small farmers and actually force the government to fork out even more to them in support payments. Besides it is argued many payments ultimately go not to rich landowners but to hard-working tenant farmers. And anyway enforcing such a program would be devilishly difficult because people are so good at hiding their finances from inquiring eyes. Indeed many farmers have figured out ways around an annual ceiling on total support payments that was imposed a few years ago. Such arguments got a sympathetic hearing from Democrats and Republicans alike on Congress's agriculture committees. So those commit- tees essentially ignore requests to end the payments. Instead they choose to meet their overall budget targets by trimming a little here and there in other programs. The payments live. Somebody somewhere can make a case for just about every program. But cutting spending means telling all kinds of people rich and poor alike
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