And this is just one department of stolen wasted tax dollars. Remember when you say Bureaucrat you are saying Democrat. They are the same. National Leauge of Taxpayers When proposals to balance the budget come up, tax-and-spend politicians like to cry that there’s nothing to cut. Well, we’ve got a good place for them to start. If we’re ever going to restore fiscal sanity to the federal government, it’s going to take more than cutting a handful of wasteful programs. Because as long as the bureaucracies operating those programs remain in place, they’ll never stop finding new ways to spend your taxpayer dollars. And a prime example of this is the United States Department of Agriculture. The fact is, the USDA is a web of wasteful giveaways, destructive subsidies, and costly mandates -- many of which don’t even have anything to do with agriculture. The Department’s total yearly spending has more than doubled over the last decade, most recently reaching $155 billion. The Christmas list of goodies the USDA gives the agriculture industry in a single year includes: *** Over $13 billion in direct payments and subsidies to farmers, regardless of how much a recipient actually produces, *** $14 billion on crop insurance, subsidizing insurers and picking up the tab for anywhere from 38% to 80% of premiums, *** $390 million on risky loans to farmers whose credit is substandard and can’t qualify for private loans. Are these lifelines for an ailing profession? Hardly. Just look at all the goods that don’t get regular subsidies -- meat, fruit, poultry -- and still manage to do just fine. The fact is, this spending is another form of crony capitalism. But even worse, in addition to taking our tax dollars, subsidies keep crop prices artificially high and reduce farmers’ incentives to maximize efficiency and cost-effectiveness. For years, the USDA has spent an additional $6 billion yearly in ethanol subsidies, which encourage farmers to use corn for so-called alternative fuel instead of food. Reducing the supply of corn for food makes its price skyrocket -- and all for an energy source that is actually one of the least efficient and most expensive. Congress supposedly ended ethanol subsidies in 2012, but they live on in the form of so-called Renewable Fuel Standards, which in effect require 44% of the year’s corn crop to be used for ethanol. A recent study predicts that this mandate will actually raise gas prices 30% and diesel prices a whopping 300% by 2015. And then there’s all the spending that has little or nothing to do with “agriculture,” but lots to do with funding the social welfare bureaucracy. For example, the USDA is home to the federal government’s massive food-stamp program, which spends an average of over $76 billion a year on what has been long known to be a failure. Study after study has shown that unlike private charity, this so-called public assistance actually prolongs government dependence instead of reducing poverty and creates massive opportunities for waste and fraud. In fact, the USDA Inspector General’s office has reported that food-stamp fraud costs as much as $222 million every year. Then there’s the annual $700 million to “improve the aesthetic character of private land.” So bloated is the USDA that it spends $2.8 billion just on programs that duplicate what other agencies are already doing, such as $1.15 billion in international food aid (which duplicates the USAID program). And of course any time there is big-time government, there is big-time fraud. A recent Government Accountability Office report revealed that between 2008 and 2012, the USDA paid out over $36 million in payments to dead farmers. But predictably, instead of balancing the budget, the tax-and-spend politicians still want to spend more. The fact is, the recently-passed Farm Bill will add another full TRILLION dollars to our $17 trillion national debt. And incredibly, in addition to continuing the aforementioned giveaways, the Farm Bill finds brand-new ways to waste your money: *** $63 million for projects to combat global warming, such as burying goat manure and studying cow flatulence, under the guise of value-added producer grants, *** $881 million in giveaways to more so-called “green energy” boondoggles, *** Even a brand-new tax on Christmas trees! This will fund a new government-run marketing board to promote fresh-cut Christmas trees. The fact is, this kind of nonsense, from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Energy to the Department of Commerce, is going to continue as long as politicians can get away with spending whatever they want to fund special interests while putting it on a credit card. The only way to force them to take America’s financial situation seriously is by making sure they know the American people won’t stand for more spending. That’s why I hope you will click below to sign your petitions for the National League of Taxpayers Balanced Budget Amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 7 and House Joint Resolution 5. This Amendment is the best of the lot and would not only require a balanced budget but would require a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress to raise taxes, and a three-fifths vote to raise the debt ceiling. This NLT-supported Balanced Budget Amendment would put every wasteful program onto the chopping block simply by forcing politicians to actually make tradeoffs in their spending.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 09:22:15 +0000
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