I guess being a Democrat is no guarantee that you are always going to do the right thing.
The most important element of the Farm Bill of 2007 was defeated today by the filibuster threat of Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln (D). The vote was 56-43 but not enough to affect cloture.
If there is one thing that I wanted to see in this bill, it was the Dorgan-Grassley amendments that would have limited subsidies to $250,000 per year. I was even concerned that my Senators, Feinstein and Boxer would not support Dorgan-Grassley... in the end, they did.
The Center for Rural Affairs has been a supporter of Dorgan-Grassley because they represent the struggling farmer, not the mega-bucks agribusiness interests that appear to own Sen. Lincoln.
There was a time when the New Deal represented the joining of farm and labor in a great movement. Even with some problems, the New Deal mechanisms worked better than the commodity (corn, soy, rice, cotton, wheat) subsides that we have now.
We need progress. It seems like Sen. Lincoln wants plantations.