A Stitch in Haste

Despite ever-increasing crop prices -- and with them ever-increasing farm incomes and ever-increasing farmland values -- the Senate has concluded that farmers need ever-increasing taxpayer subsidies:

Tapping savings resulting from tighter tax rules on business, the Senate Finance Committee yesterday approved the creation of a $5 billion fund that would compensate farmers hit by weather-related losses over the next five years.

The proposed Agricultural Disaster Trust Fund is part of a nearly $14 billion package of tax incentives for rural conservation programs, bioenergy development and young farmers, outside the existing farm subsidy program.

Of course, why farmers can't be expected to buy their own property insurance -- like everyone else in the country -- is left unexplained.

More:

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who has led the fight for the disaster program, said that "an awful lot of people around this country are going to benefit."

An awful lot more -- every single taxpayer in the country -- will not. What more need be said?

And remind me again how the Democrats -- such as Senator Conrad and his co-conspirators on this bill, Tom Harkin (D-Farmland) and Max Baucus (D-Ranchland) -- will be the party of fiscal responsibility after the 2008 election?