Necessary Roughness

$286 billion of your present and future tax dollars would be distributed to studying Chesapeake Bay, advocating healthy snacks in schools, increasing food stamps, seizing more land for habitat preservation, labeling foreign food, and of course subsidizing farmer underproduction, if the Farm Bill passed by the House were to be signed by the President. President Bush has promised a veto.

The Washington Post reports:

The centerpiece of the bill is a web of price guarantees and direct payments going mainly to corn, wheat, cotton, rice and soybean growers in a few Midwestern and Southern states. The cost to taxpayers will be about $7.5 billion a year.

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The House bill includes a new concession for cane and beet sugar producers, ensuring that they will not have to cut back on their planting when unrestricted Mexican sugar imports start next year under NAFTA. The Department of Agriculture will be required to buy up volumes of sugar comparable to the imports and sell it to ethanol plants for a reduced price, at a 10-year cost to taxpayers of $1.4 billion.

$8.9 billion directly supports producers. That leaves $277.1 billion of non-farm expenditures in the Farm Bill.

Here’s how Ohio voted, right down party lines:

John Boehner (R) - No
Steve Chabot (R) - No
Paul Gillmor (R) - No
David Hobson (R) - No
Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D) - Yes
Marcy Kaptur (D) - Yes
Dennis J. Kucinich (D) - Not Voting
Steven C. LaTourette (R) - No
Deborah Pryce (R) - No
Ralph Regula (R) - No
Tim Ryan (D) - Yes
Jean Schmidt (R) - No
Zack Space (D) - Yes
Betty Sutton (D) - Yes
Pat Tiberi (R) - No
Michael Turner (R) - No
Charles A. Wilson (D) - Yes