Bill Shughart on the farm bill:

In truth, America’s farmers are wards of the state.

If you thought things had changed for the better following passage of the landmark “Freedom to Farm Act” in 1996, you’d be wrong. Indeed, that law was intended to phase out federal farm subsidies by 2002, perhaps tolling the death knell of politically influential agri-businesses and their Gucci-shod lobbyists. Soon thereafter, farmers, aided and abetted by delegations representing Midwestern and Plains states, persuaded Washington to authorize “emergency” payments to offset the pending loss of crop price supports.

The predictable result: although Congress reinstated price supports in 2002 to try to end emergency payments, farmers get both.

So, every year since then, billions in price support and other emergency payments are forcibly transferred from ordinary taxpayers’ pockets into farmers’ bank accounts—when it is too wet, when it’s too dry, when crops fail, and when produce prices are too low. Farmers even get money for natural disasters not affecting them, as in 2003, when a nonexistent drought was declared, and 2006, when an earthquake struck Washington state. The old joke about how to starve a farmer—weld his mailbox shut so he can’t collect his government checks—is no laughing matter.

Full article here.