If, indeed, Tony Blair has gotten the G8 leaders to agree to eliminate at least certain forms of agriculture subsidies, this will be a huge step forward.
Dole is urging his country to be politically courageous, perhaps he might demonstrate his own nerve by offering agriculture subsidies as a source of funds for democracies abroad.
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Reply: The President does in fact have a proposal to reduce agriculture subsidies in his FY2013 budget, and he proposed it again in his offer to Speaker Boehner.
Agriculture subsidies by the U.S. and the European Union were a major sticking point in the Doha discussions for developing countries, who say their farmers cannot compete with subsidized goods.
Senate Democrats have proposed replacing the imminent cuts with a combination of more tax revenue from millionaires, ending agriculture subsidies and reducing defense spending after the end of combat operations in Afghanistan.
Also on the table: ending agriculture subsidies, increasing the gas tax, taxing capital gains and interest as ordinary income, reducing some of the spending in the new health care law and freezing pay for government workers.
"We eliminated four different agriculture subsidies and instead have moved to risk management so we'll support farmers and ranchers when there's a loss, where there's a weather loss, it's a price loss, through crop insurance, through other things where the farmer has some skin in the game, " Stabenow said.
By law, the across-the-board cuts are supposed to be taken in equal measure from front-line programs like air traffic control, meat inspection and the Border Patrol and lower-priority items such as agriculture research and subsidies for airline travel to rural airports.
To its credit, his government has so far resisted some of the other errors of the past, such as wasteful subsidies for agriculture and consumer price controls.
Brazil is a US rival in terms of agriculture and says the subsidies that the US pays its farmers create an uneven playing field, and until that's solved, they can't join.
Despite its recent increase in production subsidies (to levels still below Europe's), the United States recently put forward a welcome long-term proposal for reducing subsidies for agriculture, much pooh-poohed in Europe.
They undid the positive reforms of the 1990s with central-planning subsidies and controls for agriculture.
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With the possible exception of agriculture, the energy industry enjoys more outrageous subsidies, market distortions and other forms of disguised aid than any other.
If these limits are breached all the same, the farm bill also contains a clause that allows the agriculture secretary, in theory, to cut subsidies.
Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, says his organisation is troubled by the fact that subsidies are at their highest when agriculture is most profitable.
In his own budget speech, India's finance minister, Jaswant Singh, proposed a modest dent in the subsidies poured into both food and agriculture by announcing an increase in the price of fertiliser.
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Instead, it is cutting nonrice subsidies and likely will soon revise its Agriculture Basic Law and allow corporations to till the land.
Similarly, Cambodia promised never to subsidise agriculture, even though America and Europe spend billions on farm subsidies every year.
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Introduce a system of direct subsidies to farm households, thereby encouraging persons desiring to enter agriculture to do so without great risk.
Ann Veneman, Mr Bush's agriculture secretary, suggested a more sensible approach to farm support, unlinking subsidies from production and focusing more on the environment.
'Its very ironic that the World Bank and other international institutions do not allow any concessional credit for agriculture in developing countries, when at the same time they are allowing subsidies in the North.
To deal with the hideous cost of farm subsidies, Mr Abe has appointed an affable farmer's friend as agriculture minister.
Liberalise agriculture (Mr Lugar's 1996 farm bill is phasing out America's own subsidies).
Republican Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam had worked closely with Rep. Plakon to draft the renewable energy subsidies and pass them through the Republican-dominated legislature.
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Whatever team she puts in place, Miss Megawati seems unlikely to press hard for asset sales from the bank-restructuring agency, for deep cuts in subsidies, or for reducing the government's influence over small business and agriculture.
Agriculture ministers leerily reached agreement on one part of the package, the cutting or capping of farm subsidies, that was supposed to have been resolved last month.
But US Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said they could not expect one until other rich countries agreed to end their own subsidies under the so-called Doha round of WTO talks in Hong Kong in December.
The divide over agriculture threatens to undermine Doha because the developing countries, which object most strongly to the trade-distorting subsidies provided to farmers in the industrial world, were such reluctant participants in the first place.
And it says the subsidies that continue should have environmental conditions attached "to ensure that there are some basic benefits from mainstream agriculture".
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