A good reminder how any health care reform Republicans and Democrats produce in Congress can easily give away the store to the insurance industry rather than actually producing quality legislation.

grow real food

Come on! I guess that is opposed to growning fake food! There are few as dangerous as those who are sure that they are right with so little evidence.

Farm subsidies are bad for the same reasons that petroleum or most other subsidies are bad. They distort.

I'm wondering, given how these subsidies benefit agri-corporations so much more than small (read "actual") farms --

Is it even politcally possible to reduce subsidies for these modern entities, even if the reduction is offset to greater funds for the majority of farmers?

"Pork politics at its absolute finest"

Rather, you need to beat it by replacing it with some bill that has more winners, or at least a relatively equivalent amount.

Well, we could break out the funding and policies for the Food Stamp Program, and hope it passes separately. That might take a fair bit of pork too, of course, because everyone loves the middle class but doesn't care much about helping the poor. The bill also affects a lot of environmental policies, directly and indirectly.

And then there's the economy of rural areas. People still live in Vermont, upstate New York and Kansas, albeit not many, and there are a lot of things that they (we) rightly can't do with our natural resources due to conservation issues and long-term planning and stuff, but we have to do something. The farm bill's commodity subsidies and local food initiatives and pork might be vastly inferior to direct subsidies or something, but would that pass?

Geez! Talking to farmers about the Farm Bill! What an effing BRILLIANT idea! For our next trick we will consult with blacks on affirmative action, Latin Americans on immigration and pundits on assistance for the brain damaged. It's a whole new paradigm!!!

Seriously though, would it have killed you or Grist to talk to the National Farmers Union a couple of times? Or heaven forfend, actually go to Iowa or North Dakota and spend a week with the "welfare bums" you love to bash so much.

Let's all remember that Bush vetoed this horrible bill.
The White House says reforms to traditional crop-subsidy programs, including subsidies to the wealthiest farmers, didn't go far enough.

Thank you President Bush

And guess who voted to override his veto? Democrats, and lots of 'em. All but 2 in the Senate.

So, complain to them.

66% of the money is for nutrition (Food Stamps)

14% is for conservation (animal habitat)

9% is for commodity programs (money going directly to farmers)

8% is for crop insurance (this keeps farmers in business after a crop disaster - farmers pay part of the premium and the government pays the rest because the insurance is costly due to the very high risk involved)

3% is for all other items

The big increases were for nutrition and conservation. The big cost reduction was on crop insurance.

Financially, this bill should cost a lot less than the current farm bill has over the past several years.

How horrible is that?

Plenty of Republicans as well as Democrats voted for the bill. Maybe Democrats shouldn't vote to give money to people who tend to vote Republican.

One big problem was that Bush failed to show any leadership on this bill. Congress had already agreed to reduce the amount that an individual could collect in subsidies. Bush's only contribution was to demand that they reduce the limit further. Instead of leading, he just came along at the end of the process and sniped. Complain to him.