Everything that's wrong with the Farm Bill just passed by Congress obscures what's right with it.

There's a lot of both.

What's wrong is that Congress squandered an opportunity to reform a wasteful system of subsidies to farmers who don't need them, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

What's right is that the majority of the $300 billion bill -- two-thirds of it -- pays for public nutrition programs like food stamps and provisions for food pantries. Those programs, which have been hardly adequate to the growing need over the last few years, got a big boost in the Farm Bill.

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The opportunity for Farm Bill subsidy reform arose out of the convergence of several events: farm income rose 56 percent over the last two years, food prices are climbing steeply and President Bush lent his strong support to efforts to cut payments to farmers, especially those farmers making hundreds of thousands of dollars -- even millions -- a year.

A non-profit advocacy group issued a report at the beginning of debate on the bill last year that analyzed federal records and uncovered subsidy payments to "farmers" who were really wealthy investors living in Beverly Hills and on Park Avenue. That stoked the growing calls for reform, and the movement was joined by an unusual alliance of environmentalists and conservative think tanks.

If ever there was a time to cut back farm subsidies, it was in this Congress.

But hell hath no fury like the farm lobby scorned.

Farm belt lobbying wins subsidies

Senators from states where big agriculture holds sway were relentless in their pressure to maintain the subsidies and other preferential programs. So were bloggers and editorial boards in the farm belt as well as farm bureaus across the nation.

The bill now includes payments totaling $5 billion to farmers who may not even be growing crops. It gives payments to married couples who are farming and who have a combined annual income of $1.5 million. There are subsidies for thoroughbred horse breeders and huge cotton and rice growers and a buyback program where the feds will purchase so-called "excess" sugar from U.S. producers at 23 cents per pound and then sell it to ethanol producers at 2 cents per pound. Guess which poor suckers foot the bill for the difference of 21 cents per pound? You, the taxpayer.

By the time the Senate passed the Farm Bill last week with an overwhelming and bipartisan vote, it was so filled with pork that just about everyone in Congress could claim they were bringing home the bacon.

Collins couldn't vote for Farm Bill

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who had come down on the side of the reformers, couldn't bring herself to vote for the bill. She issued a statement saying, "The Farm Bill contains massive, wasteful taxpayer subsidies for large agri-businesses. ... The legislation is hugely expensive ... and fails to provide meaningful crop subsidy program reforms." We agree.

Yet there were also reasons to vote for the Farm Bill, as did Maine's other Republican senator, Olympia Snowe, and the state's two Democratic congressmen, Tom Allen and Mike Michaud.

Nutrition programs win increases

The major reason was the big, $10.3 billion, 10-year increase in spending on nutrition programs, which includes $7.9 billion in additional spending for the food stamp programs.

Food pantries have been getting far less food from the feds in recent years, while at the same time more people are showing up at their doors. Those pantries will get additional food with the bill's annual addition of $125 million for emergency food relief.

Eligibility for food stamps has been expanded, and the minimum monthly food stamp benefit -- set at a ludicrous $10 a month -- will be raised. More low-income children in schools will get the benefit of a fresh fruit and vegetable snack program. More elderly people in need will get food.

In the world of politics, purity is a largely abstract notion. So an entire group of people -- churches, advocates for children, the poor and the hungry -- who ordinarily would have been likely to push for reform in the Farm Bill instead found themselves advocating for the subsidy-laden bill because it promised to put more food in the mouths of needy Americans.

Bill is virtually veto-proof

Such was the genius of the early Farm Bill proponents, who decades ago tied its agricultural provisions -- attractive to rural constituencies -- to public nutrition programs, attractive to urban constituencies. By pulling the two parts of the country together through the bill's wide-ranging focus, they assured that virtually every Farm Bill would give something to everyone. Thus, the veto-proof margins by which this Farm Bill was passed in the House and the Senate.

Bush has indeed promised a veto of the bill. Congress will hand him an override in response. In a year when the numbers of hungry people across the nation have been increasing, when food prices are skyrocketing and energy costs are stealing more and more of the family budget, this Farm Bill's benefits to the nation's needy are, unfortunately, bought at the price of reforming wasteful farm subsidies.