First a plug. If you pay taxes then the best $50 you can spend is to join Tax Payers for Common Sense. The pork spending that they identify and fight allows more taxpayer money to be spent on sensible programs and/or be left in the private sector where it belongs.

Speaking of pork, farm supports are back in the news. President Bush wants to institute a $250,000 limit on the hand-outs. This cap helps all taxpayers and only hurts the largest agribusiness concerns who love (but don’t need) the government largess. Farm supports are outdated, depression-era programs that keep the farm sector from being free-market and have the side effect of hurting small farms by making it harder for them to compete with the larger farms who collect the vast majority of the subsidies. During the false government surpluses of the late 90s, Congress passed the most expensive farm legislation in history increasing annual farm payments to a projected $24 billion in 2005. If that money was redirected to better uses, it would pay for a lot of teachers, social workers, policemen, debt repayment, highway repair, and so forth.

Despite the waste and inefficiencies of the farm programs, the House Agriculture Committee members are demanding that the White House leave the last farm bill alone. Hopefully, Bush still stand strong against these lawmakers and other entrenched interests that keep these undefendable subsidies flowing. Otherwise this will be another case of empty sword-rattling and false starts that leave taxpayers holding the tab. Once again, join Taxpayers for Common Sense at the link above.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 8th, 2005 at 4:03 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, Your Tax Dollars In Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.