Buying Votes in Arkansas With Our Money

Intrade contract for Blanche Lincoln to win, odds now at 5.5%, down from 70% a year ago (click to enlarge):

From today's Wall Street Journal:

"Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln is down 20 points in the polls, but the Democrat is apparently going to go down swinging—with $1.5 billion of your money. She is the spending problem, in profile.

Last year heavy rain damaged cotton and rice crops across the South. The 2008 farm bill, passed by a Democratic Congress, created the Supplemental Revenue Assistance Program (SURE) to aid farmers hit by such weather-related disasters. The admirable intent was to stop farm-state Senators from looting the Treasury after every early frost or the like. To qualify for SURE funds, farmers are now required to buy crop insurance (federally subsidized to the tune of about $6 billion a year) and to have lost more than 30% of their crop value.

Mrs. Lincoln wants to pull an end run around this law and make Arkansas farmers eligible for retroactive taxpayer payments. The payments would be made even if the recipients didn't buy crop insurance and even if their damages were as little as 5%. Most small businesses in America suffered far more than a 5% fall in revenues during the recession, but few are getting six-figure handouts from Uncle Sam. Rice and cotton prices have recovered nicely this year in any event.

Nearly 200 Arkansas farms and 100 Louisiana farms will get a check for $100,000 or more, and the 10% richest farmers will get almost two-thirds of the money. One of the few federal programs the Obama administration has said it wants to eliminate is farm subsidies to wealthy farmers -- unless, apparently, the money goes to the state of an endangered Democratic Senator."

Thanks to Bob Wright.