Congress Farms Taxpayers, Again

Socialism, alas, is alive and well in the United States. If you doubt this, check out the farm subsidy bill that Congress passed last week.

The 2002 farm bill subsidies carry a $170-billion price tag over ten years. That’s twice the cost to taxpayers of any other farm subsidy bill that Congress has ever passed. Most of the loot will be carried off into the grain bins of some of America’s largest and richest agribusinesses.

A few years ago it seemed as though farm socialism was finally going to be abandoned in the United States in favor of free-market agriculture. In 1996 the congressional Republicans heroically passed a well-intentioned piece of legislation called the "Freedom to Farm Act." Subsidies to farmers were to be gradually phased out. In fact, next year was supposed to be the last for taxpayer aid to farmers. The U.S. government would intervene only in times of weather crisis, such as a drought. That "crisis" loophole was invoked every year, and in some years in the late 1990s, farmers got more aid under Freedom to Farm than they got during the old subsidy scheme.

Now, under the just-passed bill, the federal government will dole out more than $1 million in subsidies per full-time farmer who receives aid through the end of this decade. The attempt by the Senate to limit the aid package that any one farm could receive in subsidies to $275,000 a year—or about five times the average family income in America—was roundly defeated in the House, which approved a $550,000 limit. This was lowered to $360,000 by the conferees, but they also retained two provisions that allow farmers to sidestep the limits.

And so we are creating a Robin Hood in reverse farm policy. As the Heritage Foundation has discovered, this farm bill will cost the average American taxpaying family $4,300 in higher taxes. The injustice here is that the average income of the subsidized farmer is $10,000 higher than the average taxpayer whose take-home pay is being pick-pocketed by Uncle Sam to pay for this farm welfare system.

The farm state lobbyists insist that American growers cannot survive in the global marketplace without the tens of billions of aid they receive each year from Washington. But the reality of modern American agriculture contradicts that pessimistic premise. Of the 400 or so commercial agriculture commodities produced on American farms, only a few dozen—most prominently, cotton, sugar, rice, peanuts, and honey—are actually subsidized. The rest survive and even thrive without a dime of Uncle Sam’s help.

It’s insulting to our farmers to conclude, as Congress has, that they can’t make an honest profit without taxpayer handouts. American agriculture today produces three times more food on one-third as many acres, with one-third as much manpower as was the case in the 1930s. This is a productivity success story for the ages.

Indeed, farmers are victims of their own stunning success. Today only 2 out of every 100 American workers are employed in agriculture. The more productive farmers become, the fewer farmers we need to feed us. This innovation process is a good deal for the 98% of us who just consume food, rather than grow it.

Most farmers I talk to admit, but resent, that what we have today is a farm welfare system. Bill Clinton used to refer to it as "the farm safety net." Then why not a "telecom safety net" or a "semiconductor safety net" or a "beauty parlor safety net," or . . . I’d better stop before I start giving lawmakers any ideas.

A strong case can be made that the gigantic payoffs that the Congress makes to farmers do not benefit the vast majority of small and medium-sized family farms. Most of the money goes to the very farm conglomerates that small farmers are having such difficult competing with. Example: 83% of farm subsidies to Arizona cotton farmers go to those with sales of more than $500,000. The farm bill will have exactly the opposite effect that its supporters are promising. It will accelerate, rather than arrest, the decline of the old-fashioned family farmer as their agribusiness rivals slurp up the federal aid.

The definition of insanity is to try something over and over again even when it never produces the intended result. The U.S. government has spent more than $200 billion in farm aid since the late 1970s and yet, every year, more marginal farmers go out of business.

We are trying to achieve with our dysfunctional farm policies, what President Bush and many Midwestern industrial states are trying to do with the steel industry: artificially prop up companies that are non-competitive in the global market place, so that they don’t have to face the sometimes cruel fate of a free market. And just as steel tariffs, to the detriment of all the rest of us, only slow down the inevitable collapse of non-competitive U.S. steel producers, so it is with the farm sector.

We are not saving the most unproductive family farmers, we are only insuring that they die a slow, agonizing death. Five years from now the farmers whose heads we are propping up above water will be complaining with greater fervor, and then they will be demanding a $200-billion farm bill.

Congress has passed this $170-billion taxpayer rip-off called a farm bill, and as soon as President Bush affixes his promised signature we will have locked in another decade of agricultural socialism. Our policy of Freedom to Farm will be replaced with a new scheme that we might call Freedom to Farm Taxpayers.

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Bush Was Warned bin Laden Wanted to Hijack Planes
"The White House said tonight that President Bush had been warned by American intelligence agencies in early August that Osama bin Laden was seeking to hijack aircraft but that the warnings did not contemplate the possibility that the hijackers would turn the planes into guided missiles for a terrorist attack."

CATASTROPHIC INTELLIGENCE FAILURE - Reed Irvine - "In 1995, the CIA and the FBI learned that Osama bin Laden was planning to hijack U.S. airliners and use them as bombs to attack important targets in the U.S. This scheme was called Project Bojinka."

London Report: Bin Laden May Hit New York, Stock Exchange - **** October 5, 1999 **** - [Free Republic Thread]

London Report: Bin Laden May Hit New York, Stock Exchange

Newsmax.com - Inside Cover
Tuesday October 5, 1999 - 9:30 AM

The London-based Terrorism and Security Monitor is reporting that US intelligence sources are worried that terrorist Osama Bin Laden may be planning a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

US sources are said "to be particularly concerned about some kind of attack on New York, and they have recommended stepped-up security at the New York Stock Exchange and the Federal Reserve.

U.S. Authorities believe Bin Laden may have acquired chemical weapons.

Reports of Bin Laden’s activities come on the heels of heightened agitation among Muslims against the West.

Yossef Bodansky, staff director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare says "There are rumblings throughout the Islamic community right now. There’s a lot of movement and talk. It’s like a volcano just before the explosion.”

We’ve Hit the Targets’
"Could the bombers have been stopped? NEWSWEEK has learned that while U.S. intelligence received no specific warning, the state of alert had been high during the past two weeks, and a particularly urgent warning may have been received the night before the attacks, causing some top Pentagon brass to cancel a trip. Why that same information was not available to the 266 people who died aboard the four hijacked commercial aircraft may become a hot topic on the Hill."

THE FAILURE OF U.S. INTELLIGENCE AND THE ROAD AHEAD FOR AMERICA

Why Democrats should draft George W. Bush in 2004

The surest way to bust this economy is to increase the role and the size of the federal government."
George W. Bush - Source: Presidential debate, Boston MA Oct 3, 2000.

Gore offers an old and tired approach. He offers a new federal spending program to nearly every voting bloc. He expands entitlements, without reforms to sustain them. 285 new or expanded programs, and $2 trillion more in new spending. Spending without discipline, spending without priorities, and spending without an end. Al Gore’s massive spending would mean slower growth and higher taxes. And it could mean an end to this nation’s prosperity."
George W. Bush Source: Speech in Minneapolis, Minnesota Nov 1, 2000.

"People need more money in their pocket, as far as I’m concerned."
George W. Bush - The Tampa (FL) Tribune Oct 26, 2000.

"I think the economy has grown really in spite of government. This is an incredible period of time when productivity has been enhanced, not because of any great initiative of government, but because of the ability for entrepreneurs to stake a new claim."
George W. Bush - Source: Ronald Brownstein, LA Times Aug 13, 2000

I was deeply concerned about the drift toward a more powerful federal government. I was particularly outraged by two pieces of legislation, the Natural Gas Policy Act and the Fuel Use Act. It seemed to me that elite central planners were determining the course of our nation. Allowing the government to dictate the price of natural gas was a move toward European-style socialism. If the federal government was going to take over the natural gas business, what would it set its sights on next?"
George W. Bush - Source: “A Charge to Keep”, p.172-173 Dec 9, 1999

Un El día En El la vida de Jorge W. La arbusto

"Immigration is not a problem to be solved, it is the sign of a successful nation."
George W. Bush - Source: Speech in Washington, D.C. Jun 26, 2000.

"In September of last year, I welcomed my good friend, the President of Mexico, to the White House. Standing together on the South Lawn, President Fox and I spoke of building a hemisphere of freedom and prosperity and progress."

Foolin' them is easy isn't it? Heck yes.

A UNICEF-funded book being passed out at the United Nations Child Summit encourages children to engage in sexual activities with other minors and with homosexuals and animals

Clinton raped Juanita Broaddrick, not once, but twice

"That’s why I’m for instant background checks at gun shows. I’m for trigger locks."
George W. Bush - Source: St. Louis debate Oct 17, 2000

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