A Stitch in Haste

Two reasons: First, as I've mentioned before, is the over-representation of the agricultural states (qua underpopulated states) in the Senate. When North Dakota has the same representation as New Jersey, national policy is going to equate a few North Dakota farmers with many New Jersey non-farmers. Which augurs well for North Dakotans and bodes ill for New Jerseyites.

Second is, perhaps surprisingly, the exact same phenomenon in the House:

A group of dissident lawmakers led by Representatives Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin, and Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, is still pushing a plan to curtail the subsidies sharply.

But they have been largely outmuscled by the Agriculture Committee. It 46 members are slightly more than 10 percent of the House but their districts received more than 40 percent of all farm subsidies from 2003 to 2005, according to a database compiled by the Environmental Working Group, which opposes the subsidies.

Talk about the politician foxes guarding the henhouse subsidies.

Theoretically, in a world where politicians were not, by definition, moral defectives, it would make perfect sense for the Agriculture Committee to consist exclusively of members from agricultural states. Each to his legislative comparative advantage.

But in the real world -- where almost every action by Congress is driven by rent seeking, where every vote is sold either to lobbyists or the leadership, and where the question is never, ever, "How little can we tax and spend?" but always "How much can we tax and spend?" -- such a paradigm is a guarantee that reform is doomed from the outset.

---

More:

In the fall of 2005, grain prices plunged temporarily because of a bumper corn harvest and transportation problems resulting from Hurricane Katrina. Thousands of farmers locked in huge LDP profits, storing their grain and selling it for much more later when prices recovered. Farmers pocketed an estimated $3.8 billion more than was needed to give them the guaranteed price.

Could you imagine a government program in which an investment bank were eligible to apply for a taxpayer bailout whenever its portfolio fell, without actually being required to sell the investments? And later, when stocks rose again, the Wall Streeters could sell the investments and book the profits anyway, in addition to the taxpayer-subsidized compensation for the paper losses that never materialized?

Absurd? Yet that is exactly how the loan deficiency payment -- "LDP" -- program works for our "noble" Americans farmers, thanks to their "dedicated public servants" in Congress.

The mind reels.

---

More thoughts at no third solution, Cato Daily Dispatch.