Submitted by CARPE DIEM

According to the NY Times:

1. The House and Senate bills, each costing about $280 billion over five years, are way over budget and include an array of gimmicky tax increases to make up the shortfall.

2. Even worse, the bills perpetuate an unfair, wasteful program of price supports and direct payments.

3. Half the subsidies would go to farmers in just seven states producing a handful of crops — corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat.

4. Two-thirds of the nation’s farmers would not benefit at all.

5. Subsidies will flow to farm families making as much as $2 million a year.

6. What makes these subsidies even more outrageous is that just when the rest of the country is sliding into recession, commodity prices are booming and big farmers are rolling in clover.

According to the Orlando Sentinel:

7. The largest commercial farmers reap the bulk of the subsidies, while most growers get little or nothing.

8. Subsidies spur overproduction, wasting resources and harming the environment.

9. They impede efforts to open more foreign markets to U.S. products.

10. Subsidies are especially uncalled for now, when biofuel demand has sent farmland values and crop prices soaring.

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