Washington, D.C. - Tom Schatz, President of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW), denounced the House Agriculture Committee reported version of the 2007 Farm Bill, H.R. 2419, as “a sham for pretending to reform farm programs.”  Prior to the markup, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) revealed that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had insisted that the committee provide payment limitations to mollify reform advocates on the House floor.

            H.R. 2419 would reduce the threshold from $2.5 million to $1 million in annual adjusted gross income (AGI) at which farmers would be barred from receiving subsidy payments and those earning between $500,000 and $1 million would lose eligibility if less than 67 percent of their income came from farming.  It also purportedly eliminates the three-entity rule, which allows farmers to collect subsidies on up to three properties.  At the same time, however, the committee increased the cap on direct annual payments from $40,000 to $60,000 and eliminated the limits on marketing loan payments and loan deficiency payments.  Without such limits, there is no need to create three entities.

          “The $1 million AGI limit will only impact one-tenth of one percent of subsidy recipients, while the Bush Administration’s proposal to change the AGI limit to $200,000 would at least have hit the top 2 percent.  Other than trying to fool people into thinking that payment limitations have been tightened, the Agriculture Committee simply rubber stamped the same subsidy systems enacted in the 2002 Farm Bill,” Schatz added.  “Those policies help the richest farmers get richer, but don't help small farmers stay on their land.  They also undermine the economy of rural America, interfere with international commerce, and hurt poor farmers in developing countries, while being costly to U.S taxpayers and raising prices to consumers.”

          “Speaker Pelosi is rushing this massive bill to the floor in a hurry, before the American public finds out how bad it is.  Taxpayers should take note that they will be stuck with a large bill for this Farm Bill,” Schatz concluded.

            CCAGW is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.