The farm bill drifted to its anti-climatic finale last week in the seemingly rudderless Senate. We will have to wait for the New Year to see what Congress actually sends to the President. Essentially the Senate took the pile of manure it got from the House, added a couple billion dollars and topped it with a new permanent disaster slush fund that will be spent in just five or six states, and called it a finished bill.

We say rudderless because it took a couple of eye-popping agreements among Senate “leaders” to even get the bill done. First, after two weeks of back and forth (longer if you include the weeklong Thanksgiving vacation), Democrats and Republicans agreed to limit amendments to twenty per side. Then, after Rumpelstiltskin-esque foot-stamping by one Southern Democrat, Senate leaders agreed that some amendments would require sixty votes for passage, instead of a simple majority.

This wasn’t because the afore-mentioned Southern Democrat, Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), actually took to the floor to filibuster. Instead, she merely threatened to filibuster and Congressional leadership couldn’t be bothered to call her bluff. As a result, a bipartisan amendment to limit total subsidies received by a single farm to $250,000, received majority approval (56-43) but failed anyway.

Sen. Lincoln had plenty of support from Democrats and Republicans alike, especially those from the South with their big rice, cotton, and peanut farmers back home. Senators Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) made frequent appearances on the Senate floor during the farm bill debate to make the pitch for their particular commodity favorites.

A handful of other amendments that defenders of the status quo feared might pass were also held to the same sixty-vote bar, including one from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) that would have denied subsidies to farmers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of more than $750,000. For the rest of us who rely on an accountant or Turbotax to do your taxes, “AGI” is your income after deducting certain expenses. In the case of farm income, the IRS generously allows thirty such deductions.

One bright spot was acceptance of amendment from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) which restricts farm subsidy payments from going to deceased farmers. Now that’s aggressive reform!

In the midst of record crop prices and farm incomes, sensible reforms didn’t get a fair shake. As it all unfolded, dozens of newspapers across the country editorialized in favor of many of the proposed changes. Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) seemed to regret supporting the weak farm bill that she arm-twisted through the House, commenting that she hoped the Senate would pass stronger reforms in its version.

Adding fuel to the reform flame, the President threatened to veto the farm bill if passed unchanged; former President and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter wrote an op-ed urging caps on farm subsidies; and former Secretary of Agriculture and Republican National Committee Chair Clayton Yeutter sent a letter to Congress urging support of reform amendments on the Senate floor.

But in the end, there was little in this bill in the way of reform. Farm bill reformers won majority votes on critical amendments that would save taxpayers money by preventing millionaires from receiving subsidies. But like a home-town referee, Senate leadership changed the rules mid-debate to get a bad bill passed and everyone lost except for those throwing tantrums on behalf of corporate farming.