Jeff Flake: “Congress recently approved the farm bill and it's now on its way to a Presidential veto. Any farm bill that increases…”

“Congress recently approved the farm bill and it's now on its way to a Presidential veto. Any farm bill that increases the size and scope of government, lacks real reform, continues to provide for wasteful agricultural subsidies, and even allows millionaires to continue to receive these subsidies, deserves the veto that it's going to get. It also uses a lot of budget gimmicks to get under the level that would allow it to pass in the first place. So I am glad that the President has decided to veto the bill. We should sustain it. There's another big reason to sustain a Presidential veto of the farm bill. It's recently come to light, and we only know this because we got the final draft of the bill I believe on the day or just the day before that we voted on it so very few of us were able to actually look through it and to see what was in it. One of the programs in it is called the Average Crop Revenue Election, or ACRE program. This will allow farmers starting in 2009 the option of taking a 20 percent reduction in direct payments and other farm supports in return for a Federal guarantee on their revenue. Now as we talked about during the debate on the farm bill, farmers can receive direct payments that don't relate to the price of commodities at all. They simply receive payments based on acreage that they had way back when. These payments total about $5 billion a year. They should be done away with completely. But they are now seen as an entitlement.…”