Red state voters like to complain about excessive government spending … until the subject turns to farm subsidies.

Then wheat farmers in the West, corn growers in the Midwest and cotton/sugar producers in the South start sounding like whining agri-liberals.

National Public Radio provided a maddening example recently with a report on how U.S. taxpayers are not only subsidizing U.S. cotton farmers, but Brazilian farmers, as well.

Huh?

Only in the contorted logic of agri-welfare does this make sense.

U.S. cotton farmers, according to the NPR report, get between $1.5 billion and $4 billion per year from U.S. taxpayers.

It’s the only thing keeping U.S. cotton prices low enough to be competitive on the world market. It works so well that the U.S. is the largest cotton exporter in the world, basically putting Third-World farmers out of business.

If this doesn’t sound like fair trade, it isn’t. That’s why Brazilian farmers went to the World Trade Organization and complained in 2002.

They won their case in 2004, but the U.S. did nothing to change the subsidies. Meanwhile, the U.S. filed appeal after appeal, losing each time but still refusing to change the illegal subsidy program.

So Brazil threatened to retaliate by imposing taxes on 102 products made in the U.S. That got our attention.

A host of  industries turned to the U.S. government for relief.

Rather than cut the subsidies and anger U.S. cotton farmers, U.S. trade negotiators came up with a cunning plan: simply pay the Brazilians $147 million per year to quit complaining.

So, as you can see, we are now subsidizing U.S. farmers and Brazilian farmers, even as cotton prices have risen about 40 percent since May.

If we need to cut federal spending, and we do, cotton farm subsidies should be the first thing to go.

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