For a long time many observers didn't see much distinction between Republicans and Democrats. But this election year appears to be different as President Obama has made it abundantly clear that he wants a country with high taxes, large amounts of debt, and huge numbers of voters dependent on government handouts. You know, like Greece.
Republicans, on the other hand, claim to want low taxes, low debt, and minimal government dependency. But then where does that leave the long time Republican constituents who are dependent on government handouts? The farm bill is a good example where Republicans profess to want fiscal conservatism but who fight hard to keep those handouts coming.
Here are a couple of sentences from USNews.com that sum it up nicely:
Then there are rural Republican members of Congress who routinely denounce special interest politics and subsidies, but develop a serious case of amnesia when the farm bill is under consideration. Somehow these functioning adults, who clearly recognize loan guarantees to Solyndra were bad, believe heavily subsidized crop insurance is a public good.
This would be a good point to bring up Texas District 11 Congressman Mike Conaway for telling us, “For our kids and our grandkids, we need to get Washington’s spending under control, eliminate huge annual deficits, and begin to chip away at our mounting national debt." But then he does a cheerleader's yell for the massive House farm bill with the extraordinary claim that it "contributes to this goal by cutting more than $35 billion." Cut from what? Presumably from the Senate version which itself is packed with pork. See Senator Tom Coburn's concern about the $2.1 billion of taxpayer money spent on advertising in foreign countries in the past 13 years to market agricultural products overseas.
The title of this post was that people are paying attention to the farm bill. So let's see what some of them are saying.
WashingtonExaminer.com in Doggy glitter gets a share of farm bill billions about the Senate version:
The bill, last renewed in 2008, now costs $969 billion over 10 years, and senators hope to shave off $23 billion in savings.
(No wonder the house is so proud of their $35 billion in "savings.")
DailyCaller.com in Democratic congresswoman: Unemployment worse than 8.2 percent:
The pending House version of the 2012 farm bill reauthorization proposes $16 billion in cuts to the program. The Senate version, passed last month, rejected attempts at vast reform, but cut $4 billion from the program over the next decade — pittance compared to $770 billion the government is the expected to spend on food stamps in that time frame.
AEI-ideas.com New farm bill likely to be a budget and trade disaster:
All in all, the House [Price Loss Coverage] program has a real potential to be both a budget and trade relations disaster. Worse, it will do so at an estimated taxpayer cost of about $16 billion a year if prices return to recent historical average levels. The new House farm subsidy proposals are likely to be more than twice as costly for taxpayers as the recently passed Senate Bill shallow loss program, which itself is a potential budget buster that would cost an estimated $6 to $7 billion a year under the same circumstance (Smith, Babcock, and Goodwin). If Congress is in fact serious about deficit reduction, then both Congress and the nation are being poorly served by this bipartisan move on the part of the current House Agricultural Committee leadership.
Whenever we hear how much a spending bill will "save," let's remember that in the vernacular of government we can also "save" $245.05 by purchasing $260 Obama commemorative coins for only $14.95. Smart shoppers will save 100%.
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