Freedom Line Blog

Last Halloween, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance released a publication listing some of the frightening ways government spends money to subsidize pumpkin growers, pumpkin tossing competitions, corn mazes and other fall festivities.

Among the finds:

• Federal taxpayers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to underwrite pumpkin growers and subsidize the cost of federal pumpkin crop insurance programs .

• An agritourism grant scheme in Tennessee forces state taxpayers to fund handouts to pumpkin patches, hayrides and haunted houses.

• Each October, taxpayers in Aurora, Colo., shell out over $100,000 to bankroll “Punkin’ Chunkin’ Colorado,” an event where competitors use homemade machines to launch pumpkins hundreds of feet through the air.

Now that Halloween is upon us again, the same wasteful programs – and many others – have come back to life like money-devouring zombies. We’d all be better off if we could bury these pork projects and silly subsidies once and for all.