Promoted by Brendan

Crossposted from DKos

Is it possible? After six years, two wars, hundreds of billions of wasted dollars, untold damage to the environment, dozens of extremist judges, one outed CIA agent, 3,000 dead soldiers, God only knows how many dead Iraqis, billions in giveaways to oil and pharmaceutical companies, and more lies than a super computer could keep track of?

Is it just possible that someone with a record like that might have actually slipped up and suggested something positive? Something downright progressive?

Oh, it's not anything earth-changing like bringing the war to an end -- but Bush is actually proposing something that would cost his rich friend millions and milions of dollars and curb one of the most outrageous corporate welfare programs ever devised.

WASHINGTON - Thousands of the nation’s richest farmers would lose their government subsidies under a Bush administration plan to curb farm spending.

Proposals released Wednesday would reduce federal agriculture spending by $18 billion over the next five years. They represent President Bush’s vision of a new farm bill: a system of supports that would protect farm income and crop prices and keep food prices stable.

Anyone making more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income would be cut off from farm payments, under Bush’s plan. At that level, “you’re the richest guy in the county,” Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner said.

Imagine that. Rich people -- like the kind who write big campaign contribution checks and call themselves Bush Pioneers -- getting the shaft from George W. Bush.

This proposal is just one aspect of the new Farm Bill -- the exercise that Congress goes through every five years to dole out billions in subsidies and other assistance -- mostly to the growers of only five crops: cotton, corn, wheat, soybeans and rice.

The overall Farm Bill that Bush is proposing leaves much to be desired. And for the sake of brevity, I'm not going into other aspects of the bill. But, as the L.A. Times opines: "it is a major improvement over the trade-distorting porkapalooza that was the 2002 farm bill."

That 2002 Farm Bill was, indeed, a giant, colossal, stupendous waste of money that actually helped accelerate the loss of family farms in America. It included a pathetic provision that prohibited payments to anyone with an annual income of more than $2.5 million.

It is that provision that the new proposed Farm Bill would change -- by lowering the cap on payments to $200,000. So, how many rich folks does this affect?

These producers, about 80,000 in all, are among the top 2.3 percent of taxpayers, officials said. It’s hard to know just who would be cut off, said Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, which tracks subsidies. Cook said many high-profile recipients, such as media mogul and CNN founder Ted Turner, probably were cut off in 2002, when Congress imposed the current $2.5 million income cap.

“You end up eliminating absentee owners who have a lot of income they’re trying to shelter in agriculture,” Cook said. “It could be a small-town lawyer or a business executive in Memphis, Tenn., who’s put some money into a cotton plantation.”

The Environmental Working Group, BTW, has an excellent database that is easy to use to look up who in your state or congressional district has been getting farm subsidies.

The Bush proposal also would eliminate what is called the three-entity rule, which allows farmers to collect payments for up to three different farm operations.

And not only that -- but the same day that Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns unveiled the new Farm Bill, he traveled to Tunica, Mississippi, to promote it.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns wasn’t exactly stepping into the lions’ den, but it was close. A few hours after he announced that USDA was proposing to end farm payments for anyone with an adjusted gross income of more than $200,000 and eliminate the three-entity rule, Johanns traveled to a meeting with farmers in Tunica, Miss.

Tunica County is the home of Dick Flowers, the cotton, rice and soybean farmer who became famous on “60 Minutes” for receiving millions of dollars in government subsidies in the late 1990s.

Now that's a serious in-your-face to a wealthy Mississippi Delta planter. What in God's name could Secretary Johanns be thinking?!?! Is he on drugs? Is Johanns really a DNC mole planted in the Bush Cabinet?

And what does he mean by making Marxist statements like this:

We also had a woman by the name of Kristina in Virginia, and she said, "Farm bill policies are supposed to preserve family farms." How often have you heard that? She went on to say, "But they disproportionately channel money to big agribusiness." We listened to Kristina.

And this:

We have a proposal on payment limits that would end our commodity program subsidies to producers who are among the top 2.3 percent of Americans who file federal tax returns. Basically, the way this works is, we're taking a different approach to payment limits than what you've seen in the past. We are basically saying this: if you have an Adjusted Gross Income of $200,000 or more, your participation in the commodity programs under Title I of the Farm Bill would cease. That is, in the top 2.3 percent of Americans if you look at the statistics of the Internal Revenue Service.

We also go on to say that we are proposing to eliminate the three-entity rule. Let me explain to you how that will work. This is direct attribution, is what we call it. What it means is this. You can receive payments from any number of entities, but you are limited by two things. The first thing will be the $200,000 AGI, putting you in the top 2.3 percent of American tax-filers. And the next one will be a payment of $360,000.

Some of you will ask the obvious question, "Well, gosh Mike, how many people are getting money who are in that range of Adjusted Gross Income, because that is way up there." Well, it will save about $1.5 billion. It's a significant amount of money. It is a significant amount of money.

And just who are some of the folks who have been raking it in under the Farm Bills?

From 1995-2002, John Hancock Life Insurance received $2.6 million, Chevron got $427,000, agri-giant Archer Daniels Midland got $84,000, former Sen. Mike DeWine of Ohio got $176,000, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa got $162,000, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana got $86K, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas got $28,000, NBA player Scottie Pippen got $210,000, Ted Turner got $206,000, Sam Donaldson got $84,000, Ken Lay of Enron infamy got $18,000 and baseball pitcher Kevin Appier got $4,000.

This is just a guess, but I figure none of those folks needed farm subsidies. I'll bet none of their children would have gone without supper if they had been cut off from their farm subsidies.

The biggest chunk of farm subsidies doesn't go to Ma and Pa Kettle trying to scrape together a decent living on the plot that great granddad farmed. It goes to huge agribusinesses that keep getting bigger and bigger.

Large farms are grabbing all of the new subsidy dollars because the federal government is helping them to buy out small farms. Specifically, large farms are using their massive federal subsidies to purchase small farms and consolidate the agriculture industry. As they buy up smaller farms, not only are these large farms able to become more profitable by capitalizing further on economies of scale, but they also become eligible for even more federal subsidies--which they can then use to buy even more small farms.

The result is a "plantation effect" that has already affected America's rice farms, three-quarters of which have been bought out and converted into tenant farms.8 Other farms growing wheat, corn, cotton, and soybeans are tending in the same direction. Consolidation is the main reason that the number of farms has decreased from 7 million to 2 million (just 400,000 of which are full-time farms) since 1935, while the average farm size has increased from 150 acres to more than 500 acres over the same period.

Is that what is motivating Johanns? Is this an example of a Bush crony actually listening to the problems of the little people?

Perhaps.

Or maybe there is another explanation. Maybe Bush signed off on this thing without bothering to read it (surprise, surprise). And maybe no one at the White House wanted to tell him about this $200,000 limit provision because they knew his head would explode.

So it's entirely possible -- likely I'd guess -- that Bush is going to hear from these wealthy subsidy recipients, who will remind him about all the checks they wrote to the Bush/Cheney campaign.

And then that will be the end of that.

But it was a nice thought.