It's a pretty safe bet the average voter doesn't care what the marketing loan rate is for soybeans or lentils. Or which conservation program gets the biggest increase in the new farm bill.
But try to find someone who doesn't have an opinion on whether landowners with seven-figure incomes should get federal farm subsidies.
The Bush administration knows that, which is why the acting agriculture secretary, Chuck Conner, brings up the issue every chance he gets.
The administration proposed to lower the income eligibility limit for farm subsidies from $2.5 million a year to $200,000 a year.
The Democrat who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, has said the administration's proposal goes too far and that the House farm bill represents significant reform.
That's handed the administration a powerful election-year negotiating tool to use against Democrats as lawmakers work out a final version of the farm bill in the coming weeks.
"This is a fundamental point for the administration," Conner said. "It really was the cornerstone of our reform recommendations in the farm bill."
Democrats could defy the White House and dare President Bush to veto the farm bill that he doesn't like. But who's going to win the public relations battle if Bush says he's vetoing the bill because it lets the richest landholders keep getting taxpayer subsidies? Not the Democrats.
"If the administration holds firm there is going to be a lot of pressure on Congress to do something to address their concerns," said Chuck Hassebrook, president of the Center for Rural Affairs, a Nebraska-based advocacy group that has long pushed for tightening subsidy rules.
"The administration is justified in vetoing a farm bill that continue to subsidize mega-farms to drive family farms out of business."
Whether the Bush administration's proposal, much less the provisions that the House and Senate have passed, would help those family farms that Hassebrook has in mind is another question.
Hassebrook favors tightening limits on the amount of subsidies that someone can receive in any one year, an idea that was defeated in the Senate.
He and others say it would be relatively easy for subsidy recipients to avoid the income eligibility limit, even if it's set as low as $200,000 a year. One way to do so would be to purchase a new tractor or combine and write that off as a farm expense, which lowers the farmer's taxable income.
A millionaire subsidy recipient also could avoid getting hit by the income limit by routing farm subsidies to a lower-earning spouse, says Roger McEowen, an agricultural law expert at Iowa State University.
Richard Oswald, a corn and soybean grower in northwest Missouri, has a different concern. He thinks that tightening the eligibility rules will cause wealthy landlords to change their rental arrangements with tenant farmers like himself.
Oswald farms land owned by cousins who live in Manhattan. They split both the farm expenses and income, including subsidies, with Oswald under a traditional crop-share arrangement. A tighter income eligibility limit could render his cousins ineligible for subsidies and force them to drop the crop-share deal and charge him a cash rent instead, he said.
He argues that cash rents will then get bid higher, as growers compete for land. That would wind up consolidating land in the hands of tenants with the deepest pockets, Oswald reasons.
"To me the biggest threat to family farmers is not someone in Manhattan owning a farm," he said. "To me the biggest threat to family farmers is land consolidation encouraged by the government."
Conner says such concerns are overblown. Most farmland already is rented on a cash, rather than crop-share, basis, he says.
As far as the politics of the farm bill goes, it doesn't really matter what impact a tighter means test would have. The administration has an issue the public can understand and every intention of using it.Des Moines Register
