The threat of a presidential veto on the new farm bill provides one last chance for Congress to create some significant reform in farm subsidy programs.

Neither the U.S. House of Representatives nor the Senate took any meaningful steps toward subsidy reform when they passed separate versions of a farm bill in 2007. President Bush has said he will veto any farm policy bill that gives subsidies to farmers who make more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income.

So far, Congress has been unwilling to make even modest cuts in subsidy payments to operations and individuals that simply do not need them. It has bowed to the influence of the subsidy lobby - the wheat, corn, soybean, cotton and rice industries - to the detriment of taxpayers and small farmers all across America.

Both House and Senate versions of the farm bill would continue to make farm subsidy payments to people with AGIs of $1 million and $750,000, respectively. They would continue to send automatic direct payments of $5 billion annually to growers of those crops, regardless of high market prices or record harvest yields. Without reform, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, we'll spend $26 billion over the next five years on this one farm subsidy program, alone.

The subsidy lobby argues that direct payments to growers is just one small part of a very big farm bill. True enough, but hardly justification for allowing them to continue. Cutting $5 billion each year in direct payments to farms that don't really need it would allow Congress and President Bush to compromise on the bill's tax increases that the White House dislikes and still fully fund much more deserving pieces of the farm bill, such as conservation, nutrition or young-farmer incentive programs.

In an election year when Democrats are calling for "change" in national leadership, their congressional leadership's actions perpetuating the same-old status quo of U.S. farm policy are a disappointment. President Bush, to our surprise, has been far more reform-minded and his veto threat gives us hope that subsidy reform may yet happen before the 2002 Farm Bill extension expires on March 15.