Stop spending, Part II- Trib Editorial

American taxpayers say they're sick of federal bailouts, but here we go again.

This year, the government expects to pay almost $12 billion directly to one small sector of the economy where incomes have skyrocketed even as the recession has hammered so many others.

Wall Street bankers? Nope, your friendly family farmers.

Seems like the government can never do enough. Last week, another gift arrived in the form of new environmental rules allowing the sale of motor fuel with an increased percentage of ethanol, which U.S. producers brew from corn. It's a great way to keep grain prices high — and they have just set a two-year record.

Funny how you haven't heard much about farm subsidies in the run-up to the Nov. 2 election. Farm lobbyists, and the landowners who mainly benefit from these programs, know enough to lie low when the money is pouring in.

And is it ever: The current farm programs pay almost as much in good times as in bad. During August, federal analysts forecast a 24 percent gain in farm incomes this year, on top of banner years in the recent past. For every dollar of that income — $77 billion in all — taxpayers contribute 16 cents.

The latest spike in commodity markets promises to send incomes even higher, this year and next. As a result, the stock prices of companies that make tractors, fertilizer and seed have gotten a boost. If the Chicago Board of Trade offered a contract for shiny red pickup trucks, it would be limit up.

Farm programs can't fly under the radar forever. Voters rightly worry about federal spending run amok, and even some producers evidently feel a mite guilty about the checks piling up in their mailboxes during a national fiscal crisis. U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson, D-Illinois, describes how a farmer approached her at a recent campaign event to say he thought it was nuts for the government to send him tens of thousands of dollars when he's pulling in $250,000 a year from his farm.

He's right.

After the election, lawmakers need to approve a federal budget. The farm lobby is gearing up to fend off the predictable attacks on their little piece of it, hoping at least to postpone the day of reckoning until the current farm bill expires at the end of 2011.

Once given, entitlements can be devilishly tricky to take away. Just look at how Illinois' Seniors Ride Free giveaway continues to undermine public-transit revenues.

As we note in the editorial above, the nation faces its third consecutive trillion-dollar federal deficit this fiscal year. Wasteful and trade-distorting agricultural subsidies have to be led to the slaughterhouse.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ctc-edit-farm-20101018,0,842853.story