The farm legislation proceeding through Congress symbolizes much of what's wrong with Washington. It's government by inertia. We do today what we did yesterday, because politicians draw their power from distributing benefits and various interest groups feel entitled to receive them -- even if they serve no defensible public purpose. Our extravagant farm programs capture the absurdity as well as any other.
Since 1970, farm subsidies have totaled $578 billion, according to the historical tables of the U.S. budget. What has the public gotten for this vast outlay? Not much. Food would be produced without subsidies. Roughly 90 percent of commodity payments go to farmers raising grains (wheat, corn), soybeans, cotton and rice; these products represent about a fifth of farm cash receipts. Meanwhile, meat, vegetable and fruit producers get no direct subsidies. Does anyone truly think that, without subsidies, Iowa's cornfields and Kansas's wheat fields would go fallow?
All of this has been justified, to an absurd degree, as an exercise in saving the "family farm." But those have been disappearing at a steady rate for decades, and most of the subsidies go to large corporate farms. Can you imagine the outrage if any other segment of the community were subsized to this degree? I have noticed that the small one- or two-chair barbershops I favor are disappearning at an alarming rate. Every couple of years, I have to find another one. Please, save me from having to go to one of those salons in the malls -- spead a few billion around to the old guys with John Wayne posters on the walls and two-year-old copies of Field & Stream and the National Inquirer on the tables.
