I have a confession to make: I have a hard time making up my mind. At times, I am overcome by indecision. To be more specific, I can’t figure out which department of the federal government should be shut down first.
In the past, I’ve written about the squalid waste and corruption at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and argued that HUD should be shuttered.
But I’ve also written about the grotesque inefficiency and bloat at the Department of Transportation and urged that the building be razed to the ground.
Today, I can’t resist turning my attention to the Department of Agriculture. This is another part of the federal behemoth that specializes in taking money from productive taxpayers and dispensing it to well-connected agri-businesses to maintain a system of subsidies and central planning so Byzantine that it would probably make a North Korean Commissar shake his head with bemusement.
If you want to share my anger, read this column by Victor David Hanson. Here’s an excerpt to get your blood boiling.
The Department of Agriculture…is a vast, self-perpetuating postmodern bureaucracy with an amorphous budget of some $130 billion — a sum far greater than the nation’s net farm income this year. …This year it will give a record $20 billion in various crop “supports” to the nation’s wealthiest farmers — with the richest 10 percent receiving over 70 percent of all the redistributive payouts. …Then there is the more than $5 billion in ethanol subsidies that goes to the nation’s corn farmers to divert their acreage to produce transportation fuel. That program has somehow managed to cost the nation billions, to send worldwide corn prices sky-high, and to distort global trade in ethanol at the expense of far cheaper sugarcane. …About every 10 years or so, public outrage forces Congress to promise to curtail the subsidy programs. But when the deadline arrives, our elected officials always find a trendy excuse like “green energy” or “national security” to continue welfare to agribusiness. …In a brilliantly conceived devil’s bargain, the Department of Agriculture gives welfare to the wealthy on the one hand, while on the other sending more than $70 billion to the lower income brackets in food stamps. Originally, the food stamp program focused on the noble aim of supplementing the income of only the very poor and the disabled. But now eligibility is such that some members of the middle class find a way to manipulate such grants. In fact, 2011 could be another sort of record year for the Agriculture Department, as it may achieve an all-time high in subsidizing 47 million Americans on food stamps — nearly one-sixth of the country. …The multilayered Department of Agriculture has no real mission, much less a methodology other than to provide cash to congressional pet constituencies.
Next on the chopping block should be the Department of Education. What exactly do they do? They don’t provide money for building or equipping schools, and they don’t evaluate the teachers, nor do they set the curriculum. Those should all be the responsibilities of individual states, if they aren’t already.
Also, just HOW MANY federal ‘intelligence’ agencies do we need? I hear there are more than 25, and most are not even known to the general public like the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.
Why make a choice? Cut HUD, DOT, DOE and DOA in one fell swoop. Then decide what goes next, I would cut all research related to “Climate Change,” anthropomorphic or not.
Victor David Hanson wrote:
Hanson’s analysis on most issues is nothing short of brilliant, but he falls way short of the mark when he condemns the entire mission of the USDA. Yes, there is the continuing scandal of very rich people like Mark Rockefeller and others collecting farm subsidy checks for not growing crops, but without USDA oversight, the farm economy would soon destabilize and the remaining 1% of Americans who run true family farms would be driven out of business. The “free market” ideal that libertarians tout to the high heavens does not apply to the farm economy.
A big mission of the USDA, which Hanson probably doesn’t know or care about, is soil conservation. The world’s population exists on a thin layer of top soil without which we would go extinct. Billions in subsidies go to these soil conservation efforts. There are crop insurance subsidies to aid farmers in hedging against the vagaries of Mother Nature and research grants for agricultural science and food inspection services and continuing education for farmers, etc.
Certainly the SNAP (food stamp) program needs to be cleaned up and probably transferred to another agency and super rich individuals and large corporate interests should have their subsidies taken away, but we don’t want to throw away the baby with the bath water.
….”The Department of Agriculture…is a vast, self-perpetuating postmodern bureaucracy with an amorphous budget of some $130 billion — a sum far greater than the nation’s net farm income this year.”….
Just horrifying! The USA is surpassing Latin America in government waste!
Mr Art R. says:
A big mission of the USDA, which Hanson probably doesn’t know or care about, is soil conservation. The world’s population exists on a thin layer of top soil without which we would go extinct.
That is easily said. So we sort of go extinct without the USDA help. I would like to see proof that agriculture would disappear without that money. Does everyone in the world receives such outrageous subsidies? Mainstream media and academia perpetually are making outrageous claims -like the one that Mr Art makes-. They often allege that human well being is a consequence of bureaucrats and politicians wasting trillions and having insane oppressive & punishment power and control over our lives. But it is pretty clear that politicians and bureaucrats are the most destructive force on earth that we know how to stop. We do not know how to stop death, cancer or aging, but an immense quantity of our biggest problems and sufferance’s would be eliminated if we reduced the outrageous power that the political class gave to itself. The political class is the world biggest problem with a solution.
I have never seen a single USDA department budget where soil conservation is the main item, I was not even able to find how much is spent on soil conservation. People know much better than bureaucrats how to take care of their own property, I doubt very much that without that USDA money US soils would lose their productivity and Americans would starve. Even during Great Depression low commodity prices were an alleged ‘problem’.
As far as I know USDA spends huge amounts of money making food MORE EXPENSIVE and huge amounts of money giving food stamps -making food CHEAPER-, and this post shows how a huge part of that stamp money goes to people that does not need it.
It is contradictory to make at the same time food CHEAPER and MORE EXPENSIVE. Well, such contradiction is found all over the world in major issues supported by the left. Those contradictory schemes are great for making the political class artificially necessary and the people artificially dependent on handouts by the political class. Moreover, those schemes damage people’s self esteem, increase the exorbitant power, control and punishment power that political class gave to itself and give the political class trillions to waste and millions end up worse off (but those powerful politicians and bureaucrats do not end up worse off). This is the same old (and very boring) story that repeats itself again and again all over the world.
The “free market” ideal that libertarians tout to the high heavens does not apply to the farm economy.
.
Disagree. Especially with energy costs and transportation costs skyrocketing, family farms and small farms have a huge opportunity available, and a lean and mean small farm is best positioned to take advantage. Oh and those small farmers understand how to conserve their soil… it’s theirs, you know.
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