What makes the farm bill different from other bills in an election year? 

According to Mike Lillis at The Washington Independent: "Faced with the choice between moving legislation to the right to satisfy the White House or pushing it to next year, Democratic leaders have increasingly picked the latter. That the farm bill is an exception, lends testimony to the influence of the agriculture industry over congressional lawmakers -- and to the fear among party leaders of losing middle-of-the-country seats in November.  (Underline added.)

"Not insignificant, agribusiness has donated roughly $31 million to Washington lawmakers in the 2008 election cycle alone, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, making it one of the most powerful lobbies in the nation.

"But opponents wonder if some of the beneficiaries need the help. Under the bill, for example, individuals earning up to $750,000 in farm income and $500,000 in non-farm income are eligible for taxpayer subsidies. That means a farming couple could feasibly take in $2.5 million a year and still receive federal assistance.

" 'This bill was well designed to avoid every opportunity for serious reform of wasteful, outdated subsidy programs while actually piling on additional layers of unnecessary spending,' Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) said in a statement. 'Commodity prices are through the roof and yet we are still funneling billions of dollars to farm households making up to $2.5 million a year in profit.'

'Even some bill supporters say the income caps are too kind to big farmers. Chris Peterson, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, said subsidizing wealthier farmers pushes up rents and land prices for everyone else. 'It makes life a little more miserable for us little guys,' he said. 'Sooner or later, we're going to have to bite the bullet and get rid of some of these subsidies.'

Meanwhile Mother Jones interviews Ken Cook, the president of the Environmental Working Group and a critic of the farm bill's subsidy system, argues that "the billions distributed every year ought to actually go to the dirt-streaked men in overalls who are invoked in the farm lobby's PR campaigns."

He states: "The farm bill does definitely provide help to a lot of family farmers of exactly the type we conjure up in American Gothic style. That's not the problem with the bill. The problem is that so much of the money that goes out through these farm programs goes to very large, commercial operations that are getting bigger all the time and basically buying up those family farms with the mom and pop in overalls working dawn to dusk. Ten percent of the beneficiaries over the last ten years have gotten over 70 percent of the subsidy money. And so the concern, which, interestingly enough, we shared most with the White House this time around, was that too much money is being funneled to large, profitable farming operations.

"The first thing to keep in mind is that two-thirds of the farmers counted by the census of agriculture do not get farm bill subsidies. So most farmers don't get anything. They're small, they grow fruits and vegetables, raise cattle or horses, they live in rural areas and maybe raise a little hay and sell it. They're often not full-time operators — most farms are not — and they get no money. And even within the third that does get money from farm bill subsidy programs, the very large ones dominate. And it's getting more and more concentrated all the time.

"Although every senator has agricultural constituents, the intensity to hang onto these abusive and wasteful programs is rooted in the Midwest and the South.

"We've published the names of all subsidy recipients online. If you just look at who is on the agriculture committees, their districts and states account for 40 or 50 percent of all the subsidy money.

"Something like 92, 93 percent of the subsidy money goes to five crops: corn, wheat, soybeans, rice, and cotton. That's because, first of all, they're crops that occupy most of the cropped acreage in the country. Fruits and vegetables and so forth are really a tiny fraction of the landscape. Corn last year was over 90 million acres. Soybeans and wheat likewise are way up there. Cotton is down to nine or 10 million acres, but that is almost as much as the acreage of all the fruits and vegetables we plant nationwide.

"The National Wildlife Foundation came out strongly against the bill because what we've done is that we've offered, in addition to all these other inducements to plow up the landscape and grow crops for ethanol, we've also offered a new $3.8 billion permanent disaster program that will mostly benefit the driest parts of the country. We will basically be saying, "If you go out and plow up fragile grassland and release that vast amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — plus destroy wildlife habitats and cause soil erosion problems — don't worry about that. We're not going to hold you accountable for the environmental impacts."

"But I don't think there's ever been a worse farm bill from the standpoint of the opportunity for reform versus what we ended up with.

"But the truth is, you have look at it in context. And in the context of these times, this is a complete sellout. Because there was momentum for reform and the prices for subsidized crops are so high. This would have been the time to say, "We don't need to spend $5 billion this year, $3 billion of it on corn. We can move some of that money, at least for a couple of years while prices are high. Let's prop up and expand the conservation programs. Let's give more than a few bucks a month to food stamp recipients. Let's put more money into the school snack program. Let's make it a $3 billion dollar program and serve three times as many kids." All that stuff could have been done. But they didn't do it..."

If you're a fruit and vegetable farmer, too bad, no subsidy for you.  But corn, wheat, soybeans, rice agribusiness gets billions. 

Congress helps rich agribusiness get richer with taxpayers' subsidies but regular farmers who struggle will just have to keep on struggling or quit.