Yes, because cutting barely 3 percent from a program on which the Obama administration has more than doubled spending in less than five years (to over a whopping $80 billion every year), would have clearly amounted what is probably one of The Most Mean-Spirited, Draconian Spending Cuts of which we’ve ever heard — right up there with cowboy poetry, I’m sure. Via CBS News:

The Democratic leader of the Senate proceeded to warn the Speaker of the House that he certainly should not rely on the Senate’s largesse to bail the House out of their tricky situation, and that they should proceed to pass the Senate’s version of the farm bill post-haste:

Reid on Monday urged Boehner take up the Senate farm bill before current policy expires Sept. 30.

“Doing nothing means no reform, no deficit reduction and no certainty for America’s 16 million farm-industry workers,” Reid said. …

“I want everyone within the sound of my voice – as well as my colleagues on the other side of the Capitol – to know that the Senate will not pass another temporary farm bill extension,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

Before we allow Reid to get too caught up in extolling the ostensible money-saving and deficit-reducing virtues of the Senate’s version of the legislation, however, let’s remember that the farm bill is likely to cost a heck of a lot more than its current apologists will admit. As Veronique de Rugy points out at NRO, the farm bill’s CBO scoring is chock-full of gimmicks that rely on existing laws on sequestration, and pretty much ignores recent historical precedent: