What's Gonna Happen To The Farms?

       The House of Representatives defeated the Farm Bill this week. But that's not the important issue. And it doesn't mean there will no longer be farms. In fact what will, in all likelihood, happen is another extension to the current bill will get passed until something can be worked out. So what is the importance of this political maneuver, or was it a maneuver at all?
       In the past, farm bills have always passed both houses of Congress by wide margins. Nobody ever wanted to mess with farmers. They drive tractors. With plows. Nobody wants to wake up some morning to find their lawn planted with cabbage. Or even skunkweed. So pretty much everyone voted in favor of these bills in days of yore.
       The other thing is both houses are normally certain of having sufficient votes before bringing such a bill to the floor. But this time, somebody goofed. The Senate passed the bill with no problem. The House leadership thought they could do the same. Oops! The legislation went down to defeat. So the Republicans blamed the Democrats and the Democrats blamed the Republicans. Nobody's brave enough to blame the Tea Party. Until now.
       So how did this happen? Not the blaming part. Everybody knows how the blaming works. But how did this happen. Well, usually each side gets what they want and everybody votes in favor. But this time the Food Stamp program got cut by an extra $20 billion. So the Democrats decided not to vote for the bill. A bunch of Republicans voted against the bill because it didn't cut enough from the Food Stamp program.
       Ya see? When ya get too greedy, things have a way of going sour. I've never heard of anyone "on food stamps" who wouldn't prefer to be rich enough not to be on food stamps. If you ask anybody, they'd rather have more money. Taking food stamps away from people who can't afford to buy good nutritious food, doesn't help anybody. It sure doesn't help the poor and it doesn't help middle class taxpayers in the long run. So who does it help? Folks who are mostly interested in ideology, that's who.