Gov't Backs Off Cutting Aid to Farmers

Gov't Backs Off Cutting Aid to Farmers

By LIBBY QUAID
The Associated Press
Tuesday, April 12, 2005; 7:06 PM

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration on Tuesday threw in the towel on the president's proposal to slash farm payments in the face of opposition from lawmakers in both parties.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told key senators he was willing to look at other ideas for spending cuts to hold down the federal deficit.

"We acknowledge that many of these policy proposals, such as the reduction in the payment limit, are quite sensitive," Johanns told a Senate Appropriations Committee panel on farm spending. "We recognize Congress may have other proposals to achieve these savings, and we are willing to work with the Congress on other cost-saving measures."

The president in February proposed cutting billions of dollars from payments to large farm operations by lowering the maximum subsidies farmers can collect, from $360,000 to $250,000, and by closing loopholes enabling some growers to collect millions of dollars more than the limits.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47662-2005Apr12.html

Subsidies are bad unless the US does it, apparently.

Cutting something like welfare to farmers is not something a repug would do, not when a good number of farmers are bushbots themselves.

and see how long you last.
The farmer has to buy all his machinery and seed at retail. He sells his products, be it grain or animals at whole sell. This doesn't not even touch on the weather that can bust a record crop days before the harvest.
Without the US farmer a large number of people all over the world would starve.

anymore. Over 90% of the farm subsidies go to the large growing corporations.

The thing is these programs were intended to help the small farmer. But the fact is the majority of this $$ is going to huge corporate farms. We've got big farms here just lusting after farmland with the purpose of getting more of this farm subsidy $$. No thank you.
Pull themselves up by their own boostraps I say.

the free trade agreements we signed, I wonder what BushCo will do when the WTO starts fining us for this as they did in the steel tariff situation.

(from the 2nd page of the posted article)

If cuts don't come from payments to farmers, they still must come from somewhere. Republican committee chairmen have suggested reductions in spending on land conservation and nutrition programs, such as food stamps, also run by the Agriculture Department.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47662-2005Apr12_2.html

Take food away from poor hungry children. What a very republican thing to do.

Republicans suck.

The Flip-Flopper in Chief strikes again!

FLIP-FLOP bush.

And if anyone knows about pitchforks, I'd say a farmer does.

Unfortunately, the ones who should be rising up against the GOP are the little farmers who are losing their land to the corporate farmers... and the GOP couldn't let down the corporations, no, could it? Better to siphon that money off of conserving the land and little poor kids' plates instead.

You can't make this shit up!

You know, the guy who never backs down once he's settled on a course of action. The one who was so quick to label Kerry a FLIP-FLOPPER.

:evilgrin:

then back off so they can both satisfy their mindless base and they can say they trimmed the budget. Totally predictable. And, of course the farmers will vote GOP like usual.

How they feel about School Lunch programs for the inner city, SHIT! Ask them how they feel about ANY program for the inner city...

Rugged individualists will TELL you in no uncertain terms that people ought to be left to make it on their own, or just starve.

But don't you DARE suggest that they lose their set-backs and cheap crop insurance, etc.

We have a guy here who plants the Bottom by the mighty Ouibache every spring. and every summer, the Ouibache, she rise up and eats his corn or beans. And then he's on the front page of the paper, crying about how he doesn't make as much from the crop insurance as he could have from the crop, and it's HARD WORK bein' a small businessman.

What he neglects to say that is once the river rises, he can park his equipment and cancel the fertilizer sprayer for the rest of the season.