Tea Party candidate taken behind the woodshed by an old man asking a simple question

[The Grand Nudger]

You're absolutely right. This is what rubs my ass raw. There is no necessary connection between food stamps and the farm subsidy bills. We could easily separate the two. The reason food stamps get rolled up into the farm bills is nothing other than to co-opt legislators who might otherwise vote against handouts to the ag sector by forcing them to choose between corporate welfare for big agri-business and cutting off assistance to the poor.

Well, on the practical end - the money and goods on wic or available through foodstamps don't appear out of nowhere - so the connection is that programs or business models that can deliver more mass, more nutrients - just more- receive subsidy (see: corn), precisely so there's a glut, which the gov can then bank against disaster, or sell/give away excess. Essentially siphoning productivity in one sector to pay a bill that's created -by that sectors- end users (the poor), while rigging the price to entice producers to continue or increase their production volume. That's one reason that it's all on the same bill.

In this case the corporate welfare is actually required for our collective quality of life. That's because the welfare (both corporate and public) is inadequate in covering the costs of our current system, costs which are themselves subsidized precisely -so- that we can ignore them. If we had to pay anything's actual price (with regards to food - whether you're rich or poor) we'd realize that our currencies are becoming little more than rationing systems. I don;t know much of anything anywhere near as well as I know this stuff...but it wouldn't surprise me to find that at the heart of alot of corporate welfare complaints.

(All of this trouble, mind you, for a product that actually has an intrinsic value. Imagine the horrors of trying to regulate spending on "services", or any other such intangible.)