Bountiful harvest

Agriculture | The rich will get richer under the new bipartisan farm bill | Timothy Lamer

What do you give a rich man who has everything? If you're Congress and the rich man works in agribusiness, the answer is taxpayer money.

At a time of high food prices and rapidly rising farm incomes, Congress sent President Bush a farm bill last week that would grant direct payments to individual farmers with incomes as high as $750,000 and to farm couples who make as much as $1.5 million.

The $289 billion bill is made up mostly of nutrition programs—food stamps get a big increase—but it includes about $40 billion for farm subsidies and billions more for farmers who idle their land. Congress larded on plenty of pork, as well, including tax breaks for horse breeders in Kentucky and sales of federal land for ski resorts in Vermont.