Under the plan approved today, the new subsidies would be much smaller than the Depression-era program that is set to expire next year.

At the center of both bills is the Depression-era program that pays farmers to grow corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton and rice.

Isn't it time, many Republicans argue, to reinvent a Depression-era program for a more financially savvy generation that trusts, rather than fears, the market?

The new farm law pledged to phase out many of the government's Depression-era price-support programs and intended to wean farmers from subsidies by 2002.

To be sure, the aid would be much smaller than under the Depression-era program set to expire next year.

McAlister supported the Tennessee Valley Authority and other Depression-era federal programs.

It was designed to ensure food security by continuing the Depression-era program to pay big grain farmers to grow food.

The Depression-era program, they said, was intended to help the struggling family farmer, increasingly being bought out by big farmers encouraged by the subsidies to expand.

Through a Depression-era program known as the National Youth Administration, he was able to enroll at the University of Minnesota in 1933.

Changes to the original Depression-era program have made the program financially unsustainable under current policy.