Redstate

Posted at 3:30pm on Jun. 6, 2008 Pick Your Favorite Part of the Farm Bill!

Bipartisan Socialism and The Audacity of Corporate Welfare

By Dan McLaughlin

Farm policy, although it's complex, can be explained. What it can't be is believed. No cheating spouse, no teen with a wrecked family car, no mayor of Washington, DC, videotaped in flagrante delicto has ever come up with anything as farfetched as U.S. farm policy.

-P.J. O'Rourke.

So yesterday, the United States Senate voted to pass into law H.R. 6124, the "Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008," already passed by the House, in both cases by a veto-proof majority, rendering irrelevant the belatedly principled stand of President Bush, who promises a veto.* Chances are pretty good that your Congressperson and at least one of your Senators voted for this atrocity, which passed the House 306-110 and the Senate 77-15, despite valiant efforts to slow down the bill by Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn. Like all really horrendous things to come out of Washington, this load of legislative fertilizer has broad bipartisan support. So give thanks for the hardy few Senators - 13 Republicans and two Rhode Island Democrats - who voted "no" (as well as the lengtier list of their 98 Republican and 12 Democratic House counterparts you can find here):

Bennett (R-UT), Hatch (R-UT), Coburn (R-OK), Collins (R-ME), DeMint (R-SC), Domenici (R-NM), Ensign (R-NV), Hagel (R-NE), Kyl (R-AZ), Lugar (R-IN), Murkowski (R-AK), Sununu (R-NH), Voinovich (R-OH), Reed (D-RI) Whitehouse (D-RI)

In case you are wondering, John McCain and Barack Obama missed the vote, but McCain says he would have vetoed the bill "and all others like it that serve only the cause of special interests and corporate welfare" and because farm subsidies threaten free trade, whereas Obama is proud to support precisely the kind of legislation that has made Washington so roundly popular with the public (in Obama's statement, he says "I applaud the Senate's passage today of the Farm Bill, which will provide America's hard-working farmers and ranchers with more support and more predictability." So much for "Change").**

Anyway, in honor of this occasion, I ask you to submit your vote for your favorite provision of this new federal law, which your elected representatives have enacted on your behalf. See, Democracy works! Read On...

Posted in Barack Obama | Congress | Farm Bill | John McCain | Spending — Comments (18)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:54pm on May 22, 2008 The Slow Death of Principled Republicans in Congress

First Step in Rehab Is Admitting You Have a Problem

By Bluey

According to the Almanac of American Politics, California's 21st Congressional District is "the most productive farm district in the nation." It represents 42% of the population of Fresno County, which "produces more farm products in dollar value than any other county in the United States." Agricultural products produced in the district include: "milk, oranges, cattle, grapes, alfalfa, plums, cotton, nectarines, corn, peaches, grapes, poultry, almonds, and pistachios."

So how did Rep. Devin Nunes, the Republican who represents this district so dependent on agriculture, vote on the farm bill? He voted against it. The Club for Growth reports:

According to Andrew House, a spokesman for Nunes, the congressman voted against the Farm Bill because it was stuffed with pork and he took an anti-earmark pledge. He also voted against it because the overall spending in the bill was too much.

Unfortunately, the majority of Nunes' colleagues (100 to be exact) chose to override President Bush's veto of the farm bill. In doing so, they also sent a message to Republican presidential nominee John McCain that they don't support his agenda to bring fiscal responsibility back to Washington.

There has been a lot of talk recently about whether or not conservatives are "out of ideas." But the problem with the modern conservative movement is not that it is out of ideas. It is that the political party that most often represents conservatives, the Republican Party, has completely abandoned its founding principles. There is no better example of this than the "subsidies for millionaires" farm bill. Voters in Mississippi's 1st Congressional District did not fail to turn out for Greg Davis because the Democrat in the race promised to expand SCHIP. They stayed home, or voted for the Democrat, because they are fed up with the GOP's business-as-usual ways in Washington. And who can blame them.

Republican leaders think they can repair the badly damaged GOP brand by coming up with clever slogans and creating committees like the Fiscal Integrity Task Force. Those efforts are meaningless when more than half of the 20 members of this group voted for the farm bill!

The Republican Party will consider to suffer at the polls, and conservatives will only move further away from power, unless we start rewarding people like Devin Nunes and the other principled members who voted against this atrocious farm bill.

Posted in Congress | Farm Bill — Comments (66)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:14am on May 9, 2008 Harry Reid Has A Message For Warfighters And Consumers

Our goal is to stick it to all of you...equally

By haystack

[image via AZ Resistance ]

It's been a hectic few days for Harry the Dolt™, but his priorities have become abundantly clear: Soldiers are no big deal...there's no rush to help them...what matters is taxing big oil and lining the pockets of rich farmers.

As I mentioned here, our Warfighters are being held hostage over Reid and Pelosi's power struggle with the President. I also mentioned here that these clowns are willing to let Soldiers go unpaid unless and until they got all their own little shiny objects thrown in to the supplemental...which, by the way is an emergency supplemental spending bill that hasn't gotten done for over 440 days (and counting).

More below the fold...

Posted in Energy Bill | Farm Bill | Harry Reid | Iraq Funding | Liberals — Comments (35)/ Email this page » / Read More »