Memo to the debt-limit negotiators

Townhall.com is a right-wing magazine, and Victor Davis Hansen is an eminent and conservative historian. All the more notable then is Mr. Hansen's column of June 23,  in which he takes on the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

"The Department of Agriculture no longer serves as a lifeline to millions of struggling homestead farmers. Instead, it is a vast, self-perpetuating postmodern bureaucracy with an amorphous budget of some $130 billion -- a sum far greater than the nation's net farm income this year. In fact, the more the Agriculture Department has pontificated about family farmers, the more they have vanished -- comprising now only about 1 percent of the American population."

Can that really be true? The USDA spends more money in a year than American farmers earn? It's unbelievable ... almost!

So here's a challenge for farm-state Republicans who want budget cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling: what if we abolished the USDA? For its last act, let it identify each American farmer by name and address, and mail him a pro-rata share of $130 billion along with a farewell note of thanks. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford