I heard on the radio news the other day that Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock, was complaining about the lack of movement in the Senate on the farm bill. The farmers needed it, he said, so they could make plans as the planting season approached. "Farmers understand they will have to make some decisions pretty quick and they need some certainty," Neugebauer was quoted as saying in the Lubbock Avalanche Journal.
If farmers make plans based on what they expect to receive from a farm bill then that pretty much puts to rest any argument that farm subsidies are supposed to serve as some sort of safety net as opposed to a handout.
It brings to mind the stories a transplanted farm community lawyer used to tell. He said that every time a new farm bill was signed into law he and his farming clients would sit down with it and look for ways the clients could make money.
Please keep the veto pen handy, President Bush.
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