From the Cato Institute. Farm spending has actually dramatically increased starting in 1998 with huge emergency supplemental farm spending. I guess if they're going to spend my tax dollars to subsidise farming I'd just as soon they be up front about it and pass the bill and sign it publically vs sneaking in the emergency spending while we're not paying attention.
We still can't get around the fact that the new Farm Bill represents a 70% increase over the cost of continuing existing programs. Any way you look at it, it's a boondoggle.
From Reason online: For 70 years, the government has been shoveling money into rural America to prop up that most cherished of institutions, the family farm. Like most government programs, this has produced an unbroken record of failure. As columnist Robert J. Samuelson notes, the percentage of Americans tilling the soil has fallen from 21 percent of the population in 1929 to 2 percent today, even as the same amount of land is devoted to farm production.
I have a better idea... why not help Rep. Ron Paul and likeminded Libertarians repeal the income tax so they don't have those dollars to waste in the first place. Many (even quite a few Freepers) will say that's a pipe dream but it has the added advantage of being both the right thing to do and the most practical way to prevent government abuse of our money. After all it's not the abuse of power that's the problem it's the power to abuse.