Farm subsidies continue FDR's new deal. (Insider Report).

"Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap," observed Thomas Jefferson, "we should soon want bread." Our Founders could not countenance any role for the national government in agriculture and provided no authority for it in the U.S. Constitution.

Alexander Hamilton, in The Federalist, No. 17, declared that "the supervision of agriculture and other concerns of a similar nature ... can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction." Federal subsidies and regulation were fastened on American agriculture by the socialist central planners of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal brain trust.

President Bush and Congress are continuing the New Deal. "Farming is the first industry of America -- the industry that feeds us, the industry that clothes us, and the industry that increasingly provides more of our energy," President Bush said at the May 13th signing of the Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002. "The success of America's farmers and ranchers is essential to the success of the American economy," he continued, as a way of justifying the bill expected to cost $190 billion over the next ten years. The federal feed trough will be filled with subsidies for live stock, grains, milk, peanuts, cotton, fruits, vegetables, wool, honey, lentils, dry peas, soybeans, and many other agriculture products.

"This bill is generous and will provide a safety net for farmers," said the president, employing the language of his White House predecessor. "This bill is also a compassionate bill," President Bush stated, explaining his ongoing efforts to encourage the already out-of control influx of legal and illegal aliens. "This law means that legal immigrants can now receive help and food stamps after being here for five years."