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News Item: The House of Representatives passed a farm bill this week and, for the first time in decades, it did not include an appropriation for SNAP, the Food Stamp program. Instead, the bill dealt solely with subsidies for farmers and agribusinesses; it actually increases the money the government will spend on these subsidies over the next ten years. Among the new goodies are increased subsidies for sugar, expanded crop insurance and profit insurance for the dairy industry. The House bill has drawn criticism from both the Right- for the additional subsidies- and from the Left for the jettisoning of nutritional aid to the nation’s poor.

It should be noted that that there are a number of House members who receive Federal agricultural aid. In the hours before the bill was voted upon on the House floor last week, the Republican majority thwarted Democrats’ attempts to add an amendment which would have prohibited members who receive aid to vote on the bill.

To employ a farmer’s metaphor, it appears that there are foxes in the henhouse.