Cotton Council

The Bush administration may cut billions of dollars in subsidies to cotton growers. Like every year, the issue has set off a desktop battle as Republican congressmen pretend to fight it out.
If it actually were to be pushed through the Bush plan will take apart an elaborate government system that has crippled the commodities markets since the late 1930’s.
The World Trade Organization in Geneva ruled recently that U.S. cotton subsidies violate global trade rules because they exceed limits agreed to in 1944.
Large producers of cotton and cotton merchants in Republican strongholds of Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia demand the program be continued. Large-scale operators in California and Arizona would also be affected.
Cotton farmers take nearly a quarter of farm subsidy payments each year. Most goes to a few hundred big growers. Half of the crop annually ends up with Communist China at artificially low prices subsidized by the federal government.
Cotton interests include Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), chairman of the Senate agriculture committee. Both expressed reservations about changes in the current farm program, which does not expire until 2007.
Senator Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who represents the cotton trading center of Memphis, which hasn’t traded cotton for decades avoids the issue.
The Cotton Council and Cotton Incorporated sit on the sidelines spending taxpayer money to keep the financial floodgates open. Cotton Incorporated provides marketing services to American cotton producers and is paid by the Cotton Council.