[Rodeo]

Here's a little fuel for the fire, from today's Washington Post. If this were going on with welfare mothers, Rick would be absolutely furious. Rural and corporate welfare is a non-issue with the "party of personal responsibility," I guess.

Crop Insurers Piling Up Record Profits
Why? Subsidies and No Competition

By Gilbert M. Gaul, Dan Morgan and Sarah Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, October 16, 2006; A01

In 2002, a small upstart insurance company approached the federal government with an idea. The company, Crop 1, was one of 16 firms that sold federally subsidized crop insurance policies to farmers under rates set by the government.

Crop 1's plan was modest. It wanted to introduce a slight amount of competition by offering farmers discounts of up to 10 percent on their premiums.

An eruption ensued. The other companies quickly turned to Congress to quash the idea. In congressional testimony and letters to lawmakers and regulators, they complained that competing on price threatened the "unique public-private partnership" that the companies had with the government.

With the help of several powerful members of Congress, the program was eventually derailed.

"Why would you want to kill a program that saves farmers money unless you don't like to compete?" asked Steve Baccus, chairman of the company that now owns Crop 1. "This is about keeping the status quo."

The episode illuminates the power of a collection of niche insurance companies that have made billions in profits from the federal crop insurance program, even as the government has lost billions covering the riskiest claims, a Washington Post investigation has found.

Last year, the companies made $927 million in profit, a record. They received an additional $829 million from the government in administrative fees to help run the program. On top of that, taxpayers kicked in $2.3 billion to subsidize premium payments for farmers.

All of that to pay farmers $752 million for losses from bad weather.

"We would probably be better off just giving the farmers the money directly," said Bruce A. Babcock, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University who recently published his own study of the program. "That way we would save on all of the fees going to the private insurers."