Powerful Interests Ally to Restructure Agriculture Subsidies

Huckaby, now president of a McLean real-estate company, explained his 1988 action in a recent e-mail: "The thinking was probably that you could make all the management decisions of a farming operation in significantly less time" than 1,000 hours.

The softer language meant that the structured corporate farms could continue almost unabated. In 2004, the most recent year available, at least 1,900 of these organizations collected $312 million more than they would have if their farms were held to strict limits, the Washington Post analysis shows.

Republicans critical of big government frequently tried to pare back the subsidies, with little success until the GOP gained control of the House and Senate. In 1996, Congress passed a landmark bill, nicknamed "Freedom to Farm." It was intended to wean growers off some traditional subsidies. But a couple of years later, when crop prices dropped, farm-bloc lawmakers earmarked billions of dollars for supplemental payments to farmers.

Then in 1999, Congress and the USDA, lobbied by Southern cotton interests, opened another loophole enabling farmers to keep unlimited proceeds under the government's main price-support program. An analysis of payment records shows that cost taxpayers more than $500 million for the 2004 crop, the most recent full crop year for which data are available.

Combest's Bill

One of the most remarkable examples of the farm lobby's power came in 2001 and 2002, when the existing farm bill was written, expanding payments again over the opposition of the White House and key lawmakers. Reformers see it as a cautionary tale.

The architect of the legislation was Rep. Larry Combest, an aggie through and through, a West Texas Republican who came from three generations of cotton farmers and who took control of the House Agriculture Committee in 1999.

Others on Combest's committee included a cattle rancher and tobacco farmer from Tennessee, a Missouri corn and hog farmer, and a government-subsidized rice farmer from Arkansas. The ranking Democrat, Charles W. Stenholm of Texas, had an ownership interest in cotton farms that got more than $300,000 in subsidies between 2001 and 2005, USDA records show.

With help from a generous mandate from the House Budget Committee -- chaired by Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) -- Combest produced a new farm bill in 2001 authorizing an eye-popping $50 billion, 10-year increase in price supports and income supports for farmers. He boasted that the measure was "a major step away from Freedom to Farm."

For one thing, the bill restored a key pillar of the pre-1996 program: cash payments that compensate for low crop prices. Thousands of farms were eligible even if they never grew crops. Budget officials estimated that change alone would cost $37 billion over a decade.

The Bush White House disliked Combest's bill. Chief political adviser Karl Rove saw it as the antithesis of fiscal responsibility. "We're Republicans," aides remember Rove grumbling. The White House budget office issued a stinging critique, saying the bill was too costly and failed to help farmers most in need.

Combest also faced strong opposition from a disgruntled group of Eastern and Midwestern lawmakers, and from senators who wanted tighter limits on what a farm could collect each year.

But Combest had a strong hand. "He hijacked the process," said a former USDA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he still deals with Congress.