Top 10 Reasons $280B Farm Bill is Bad Legislation
According to the NY Times:
1. The House and Senate bills, each costing about $280 billion over five years, are way over budget and include an array of gimmicky tax increases to make up the shortfall.
2. Even worse, the bills perpetuate an unfair, wasteful program of price supports and direct payments.
3. Half the subsidies would go to farmers in just seven states producing a handful of crops — corn, cotton, rice, soybeans and wheat.
4. Two-thirds of the nation’s farmers would not benefit at all.
5. Subsidies will flow to farm families making as much as $2 million a year.
6. What makes these subsidies even more outrageous is that just when the rest of the country is sliding into recession, commodity prices are booming and big farmers are rolling in clover.
According to the Orlando Sentinel:
7. The largest commercial farmers reap the bulk of the subsidies, while most growers get little or nothing.
8. Subsidies spur overproduction, wasting resources and harming the environment.
9. They impede efforts to open more foreign markets to U.S. products.
10. Subsidies are especially uncalled for now, when biofuel demand has sent farmland values and crop prices soaring.
3 Comments:
Of course this is bad legislation, it is bought and paid for threw campaign contributions, our government is corrupt end of story. The bail out of the banks due to the collapse of the housing market disguised as helping homeowners will make this look cheap in comparison.
Here is a link to a data base of the recipients of the farm bill taxpayer funded generosity.
http://farm.ewg.org/sites/farmbill2007/index.php
Long live the free market. After someone resuscitates it.
--Nick
www.RightMichigan.com
Isn't this exactly what happens when government stickhandles everyone else's problems. Government is very efficient at perpetuating inefficiency.
Unfortunately, most people have very little knowledge of economics and generally buy into protectionism and populist arguments. It's like Ronald Reagan used to say there are always sunset clauses on tax cuts but never sunset clauses on government spending programs.
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