NPR: Farmers Angry Bush Left Farm Bill Out of Speech

Farmers Angry Bush Left Farm Bill Out of Speech

Let's see ... economy .. check. The success of the surge ... check. Renewing No Child Left Behind ... check. Nasty Iranian rulers ... check. Shot at Bill Clinton's remark about his willingness to pay more taxes ... check.

President Bush's checklist-like State of the Union speech covered a lot of important ground. But it seems like there was something missing, something really big ...

Oh yea, the farm bill.

No where in his speech did the president mention the multibillion-dollar measure now pending in Congress. In fact, he never mentioned "rural" once, and the only time he talked about agriculture was in the context of overseas producers. And as Politico reports, the U.S. agricultural community is not happy about being left out.

"Rural Americans are the genuine forgotten people, and you have just underscored that," William Greener, a longtime Republican political consultant who has focused on rural voting patterns, told Politico.

"As someone who has a passion for rural America, I certainly wish the president had given it more attention. And I would advise my fellow Republicans: to take any voter group, most especially rural Americans, for granted is at our own peril. It's not a good idea."

While the Bush administration may have stayed away from mentioning the expensive bill at a time when the president wants to reestablish credentials as a budget-hawk, it provides an opening for Democrats - for instance, as we mentioned yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama is campaign aggressively in normally red-state Kansas.

10:21 AM ET | 01-31-2008 | permalink

Comments (Send a comment)

Ethanol IS NOT the way to energy independence--ONE SIXTH of Iowa's use of natural gas is used to cook corn mash for alcohol!
The vast subsidy for ethanol projects are a boondoggle. France gets THREE times the ethanol per acre from sugar beets, but we can't learn from the French, now, can we?
This farm bill spends LOTS of money on very wealthy individuals and corporations, AGAIN.
I'm all for preserving family farms BUT also for big budget cuts in government SUBSIDIES FOR THE RICH--be they buddies of the Dems or the Gops
It's all too confusing for DubYuh to fathom.

Sent by AirCapDaddy | 10:46 AM ET | 01-31-2008

Rural was forgotten because there is a paradigm shift from the subsidized programs of the 1930s to more sustainable crops of the 21st Century. In many ways rural is leading the way - organic foods, renewable energy, sustainable soils - things that corporations and Washington DC do not recognize or understand.

Sent by Scott M. Kruse, Biophysical Geographer | 11:53 AM ET | 01-31-2008

An agrarian economy is much more stable than a speculative one.

When it comes down to it, economics is all about providing the people with the resources they need to raise families, and pursue their personal aspirations.

Our current economic system is centered around the distribution of an abstract resource, money. Since a monetary system allows people to accumulate enormous resources, regardless of their actual productivity, and we have a political system, easily bought and controlled with money, a monetary system will always, ALWAYS have booms and crashes, and will never be able to distribute resources equitably.

We need a new system which balances agriculture, technology, and media, and bypasses the archaic monetary system that is so easily corruptible.

I don't know that subsidizing farms will accomplish this, but I do know that whatever we can do to royally mess up the huge factory farms, will.

Anarchy Rules

Sent by Jody Sol | 1:01 PM ET | 01-31-2008

Considering the speaker,as a farmer, I'm relieved to not show up on this guy's radar screen. We'll just have to get down to business sometime after November.It's been a long "off season". Tom Willey T&D Willey Farms

Sent by Tom Willey | 1:33 PM ET | 02-03-2008

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