Wait, there’s more. With the new farm bill, Congress has accomplished the astonishing feat of making the federal sugar program even worse. Americans already pay close to twice the global average cost for sugar thanks to federal import quotas. The new bill adds a sugar buyback program, under which the federal government must purchase any “excess” sugar from domestic producers at 23 cents per pound — and then immediately resell it to ethanol producers at 2 cents per pound, with the taxpayer stuck paying the 21-cent-per-pound difference.

But perhaps the most egregious item in the new farm bill relates to international food aid. A longstanding provision governing U.S. food aid to foreign countries requires that all the food America sends abroad to be purchased from American farmers. This means that, however much we allocate toward international food aid, a chunk of the money goes toward transporting food from the U.S. to its final destination. In light of an increasing food-scarcity problem in less-developed countries, the Bush administration asked Congress to help cut down on transportation costs by allowing the food-aid program to purchase 25 percent of the food it distributes overseas from local farmers in destination countries. This would have allowed the U.S. to provide more food for starving people for same amount of money. Bowing to the American farm lobby, Congress refused.