Get Food Stamps Out of the Farm Bill

If anything good has come from Congress's refusal to approve a new farm bill last month, it's this: There's now serious talk of separating agriculture subsidies from the food-stamp program.

By marrying the two programs in the late 1970s, Congress all but guaranteed that rural, and largely Republican, legislators would back food-stamp funding while urban, and largely Democratic, lawmakers went along with farm subsidies.