If only Nixon could go to China, maybe only George W. Bush our disastrous agricultural subsidy programs. I’m sure Congress will hold the line this time around — agricultural states are vastly overrepresented in the Senate relative to population — but it’s a start, at least:

President Bush will seek deep cuts in farm and commodity programs in his new budget and in a major policy shift will propose overall limits on subsidy payments to farmers, administration officials said Saturday.

Such limits would help reduce the federal budget deficit and would inject market forces into the farm economy, the officials said.

The proposal puts Mr. Bush at odds with some of his most ardent supporters in the rural South, including cotton and rice growers in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The new chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, and more than 100 farm groups are gearing up to fight the White House proposal. The administration’s willingness to push the proposal, despite such protests, suggests how tight the new budget will be.

Most of the subsidies are paid to large farm operators growing cotton and rice and, to a lesser degree, corn, soybeans and wheat.

Mr. Bush would set a firm overall limit of $250,000 on subsidies that can now exceed $1 million in some cases.

In the Times article, officials at both the lefty Environmental Working Group and the conservative Heritage Foundation make a case against subsidies — how often do you see a combination like that? Bush’s proposal may be a signal that the left-right anti-subsidy coalition is gaining ground.

Update 2/7: Ezra Klein agrees, but points out that Bush signed a bad farm bill that exacerbated the problem in 2002 — a good point.