Liberal Talk Radio

This Bush proposal seems like a good thing:

The administration is seeking to eliminate farm payments for wealthy producers, limiting subsidy payments to those making less than $200,000 in adjusted gross income annually. The current income cap is $2.5 million.

Farm subsidies are on the order of $20B/year, and they’re largely a handout to rich agribusiness, or else some kind of weird tax shelter. So cutting the program by $18B over 5 years isn’t huge, but it isn’t a drop in the bucket, either. For a point of reference, when the Pentagon recommended closing over 30 military bases last year, the savings were calculated at somewhere between $2.5B/year and less than $1B/year, depending on what math you use.

So if the President supports it, and it’s a relatively easy way for the Dems to free up some money without offending any major constituents, it should be a no-brainer, right? We’ll see. Maybe I’m being overly cynical, but I have a feeling a few annoying Senators are going to try and block it for no good reason.