This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

The Farm Bill has become one of the worst legislative blunders in some time, but it does illustrate just how effective log rolling

can become and getting some legislation passed, when many provisions couldn't pass

individually on their own merits. Cato Institute Trade Policy analyst Sally James

and Government Affairs Director Brandon Arnold comment.

One of the titles, the trade title, was left out of the version that went to the president.

President vetoed the bill in its entirety, not realizing that one of the sections was left

out. So when the House and Senate overrode the veto, they weren't, they were overriding the veto,

which of a bill that didn't include the everything that they had originally put into it.

So it is a bit of a debacle and the status right now is that all

of the Farm Bill, because the House and Senate over the Presidential Vito, all of the Farm Bill,

with the exception of that trade title that fell out

is part of law, current law, but they do need to go back and pass some sort of vehicle that

will carry the trade title, which they're probably going to pass,

the House has already done so in fact, the Senate will pass the Farm Bill again in its entirety,

and then they're going to have to override presumably another presidential veto.

Now we'll get into what's actually in that but from a political gamesmanship public choice perspective

it's wouldn't it be a kind of a good thing

to have different pieces of a bill

have to pass on their own merits

rather than as one big log rolling piece

that everyone's only 51% happy with? Yes I think that's

...