If Representative Larry Combest finds the Environmental Working Group a burr under his Texas saddle, it's not hard to see why. Last spring the nonprofit outfit released a report showing how farm commodity subsidies (for corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans) have turned the home district of the Republican chairman of the powerful House Agriculture Committee into a huge federal feeding trough. The EWG is also projecting that Chairman Combest's district stands to gain hundreds of millions of new dollars from subsidies for conservation programs. These projections, released last month, come atop the EWG's deservedly famous Web site (www.ewg.org), with its farm-subsidy database allowing ordinary citizens to see who's really benefiting from their tax dollars. Recipients include such well-known family farmers as Portland Trail Blazers' star Scottie Pippen, CNN's Ted Turner and Chase Manhattan's David Rockefeller. Even Enron CEO Ken Lay collected $12,000. But more interesting than the subsidies themselves has been the response to these disclosures. The Senate was embarrassed enough to vote to cut off subsidies to the rich. But over in the House, Mr. Combest has introduced an amendment that would bar EWG from similar public disclosure of the recipients of the $38.5 billion in conservation subsidies (which aren't the same as commodity payments) to be doled out over the next 10 years. A Senate version of the same amendment has language saying the Agriculture Department "may" release names of recipients and their grants. But as the amendment gets hashed out in conference, the plausible worry is that Congress will find a way to make it difficult for EWG and others to find out who gets what. -------------------- Larry Combest wants to make subsidies state secret. ------------------- Mr. Combest's chief of staff, Bill O'Connor, denies that there is any attempt to "muzzle" this information. "This has to do with conservation," he says. "Without secrecy guarantees," he explains, "individuals would not apply for conservation money lest proprietary information about their farms or ranches land in the hands of other federal regulators." Nice try. It helps to remember that we're talking about information regarding folks lining up for a totally voluntary $38.5 billion federal feedbag. We appreciate the danger of activist groups getting hold of private information that they might then use to harass these people with lawsuits. And we're not blind to the EWG's agenda, which isn't ours and which isn't opposed to subsidies. The EWG simply doesn't want subsidies going to agribusiness. But if anyone really fears that the government is going to uncover his business secrets, there's an easy answer: Don't take the loot. With the Agriculture Department already reporting a backlog of 197,000 applications for its water-conservation subsidies alone, the fear of personal business information becoming public hardly seems to be keeping folks from applying. When Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed new rules for the FBI and CIA in the aftermath of September 11, we at least got a public debate and not a backroom deal. Do the House and Senate Agricultural Committees really believe that farm subsidies require more secrecy than national security?:
