… massive tax-payer financed ‘agricultural’ subsidies to millionaires and billionaires with vanity farms. Like the tea party leadership. Take it away, Yasha Levine:

If tea party candidates were serious about stopping runaway spending and bringing fiscal responsibility to Washington, they would have to address one of the most egregious wastes of taxpayer dollars: federal farm subsidies. These handouts have become little more than taxpayer robbery, sending billions of dollars every year to wealthy “farmers,” even some who do not farm at all. It is not an opportunity the tea party is willing to take.

“Washington paid out a quarter of a trillion dollars in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009, but to characterize the programs as either a ‘big government’ bailout or another form of welfare would be manifestly unfair—to bailouts and welfare,” says Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog that tracks federal farm subsidies. “After all, with bailouts taxpayers usually get their money back (often with interest), while welfare recipients are subjected to harsh means-testing, time-limited benefits, and a work requirement. …”

Not so with farm subsidies. Forget about helping struggling farmers—this taxpayer-funded gravy train is skewed primarily toward the rich, paying out billions to “McRanches” and to businesses like Fidelity National Financial, a Fortune 500 company, which got $6.5 million over four years to not farm its land.

Let’s peruse a short list of anti-welfare, anti-bailout tea party representatives and candidates that are gorging themselves at the federal government ag teat:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN Representative) $251,973 “The government spent its wad by April 26. Every dime government spends after April 26 throughout the rest of this fiscal year is borrowed money.”
Stephen Fincher (Tenn Senate candidate) $3.2 million since 1995 “stop runaway spending in Washington that is bankrupting America’s children and grandchildren”
Kristi Noem (ND House candidate) $3.1 million since 1995 “a voice in Congress that will work to reduce wasteful spending and offer a plan for reducing our national debt.”
Joe Miller (AK Senate Candidate) $1000 /yr for land in Kansas “The unemployment compensation benefits… it’s not constitutionally authorized”

That’s not to say that agricultural subsidies cannot have an important role in preserving farm land and promoting stewardship—when it started. By now, it’s basically become a welfare program for the ultra wealthy and corporations that dominate agriculture in the US. Shouldn’t we end it?

Jonathan Golob is an actual doctor.

13 replies on “An Example of Wasteful Government Spending”

  1. You could also mention the enormous role they play in impoverishing third-world nations, causing death and suffering to millions, and making America less safe as violent ideologies take the place of healthy economic activity, as they always do.

    I didn’t realize Bachmann had her mouth clamped so tightly on the federal teat. I don’t understand why she isn’t grilled about that every time she appears in front of a camera.

  2. Tea Party supporters are going to be in for one hell of a surprise if they somehow get a majority of Tea Party candidates elected. They hate the cow, but dont mind milking it.

  3. Yeah, ~$20 billion a year in direct costs, totally ridiculous… But the only reason the [still-not-passed] defense authorization bill made it onto page one in recent weeks was the DADT-elimination rider?! Come the fuck on–the budget was $700+ billion for ONE FISCAL YEAR, about the same as the rest of the world combined! Plus there’s another $300-400 billion for “defense-related spending outside the DoD.”

    I’m sure it will pass with little notice after the election; all they have to do is say the magic words “military readiness” and Republicans and Democrats alike melt into puddles of compliant goo.

  6. The Tea Baggers aren’t interested in controlling spending – they’re only interested in getting a white guy to run the country again.

  7. While this makes sense to me in some ways, I guess the only thing I wonder about is the issue of back-up farming capacity. By paying the subsidies, you maintain that land as farmland, which could be used for that purpose again if we ever needed it. Take away the subsidy and let the market decide, and probably those people are going to try and do something else with that land if they can. Now, of course, whether they can find another use for it is an open question. But once farmland is developed, it’s probably not going to ever go back to being farmland again. So if we needed that capacity again, I’m not sure how we reclaim it (convert vacant lots in Detroit in farms? Could work. Not sure).

    Anyway, I admit I’m definitely mostly just talking out my ass here, but I think it’s worth thinking about this sort of stuff. It’s easy to make assumptions about what our food production capacity is based on the current model of large factory farms. But as many have argued, that model may not be indefinitely sustainable. If things evolve back to a less efficient but more sustainable approach to growing food, we may be happy that that land is still set aside as farmland.

  9. Vanity farms.

    Vanity tunnels.

    What’s the difference?

    It’s still going to mean reduced school funding and fewer library hours for the peasants.

  10. Gotta love the Tea Partier/Red State crowd – complaining about guverment spedin’ on one hand while gladly holding out their other hand for subsidies, contracts, and bridges to nowhere. Of course, when you point this out to them, it’s because they represent the ‘real Amer’ca’ while the rest of us ‘fake Americans’ foot the bill.

    You don’t hear any of them talking about cutting farm subsidies, overpriced defense and security contracts, or rural infrastructure projects when that talk about cutting spending. Oh no, that would be ‘Un’merican’…

  12. Detroit is very badly polluted (for example, up until a few years ago, there was an aluminum smelting plant within the city limits that left visible ash on a daily basis). It may look like a wilderness now, but anything other than fruit trees are a fairly dicey prospect.

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