Blanche Lincoln Blocked Stronger Limits on Ag Subsidies While She Collected Them

Riceland grain elevators, Stuttgart, AR (photo: J. Stephen Conn)

Sometimes you write a story, you add a little kicker, and then you realize – a bit too late – that the kicker was actually the big story. Such it is with my post about Blanche Lincoln from this morning, about her collection of agricultural subsidies through her family's rice farming operation.

In it, I noted that Lincoln was the only Democrat to vote against the Senate's version of the 2002 farm bill, which placed some limits on subsidies to agribusiness. At the time, she was COLLECTING those subsidies. While a coalition of farm-state Senators succeeded in getting the subsidy limits into the bill, Lincoln stood in opposition to them. This 2002 NYT story explains (remember, at the time, Democrats actually held a 51-49 majority in the Senate, thanks to Jim Jeffords' party switch):

rest at http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/03/02/lincoln-blocked-limits-on-ag-subsidies-while-she-collected-them/