Freedom Line Blog

Farm subsidies are wrong on principle. It’s fundamentally unjust to take money from taxpayers and funnel it to other citizens just because of the industry in which they work. If farmers need that money to stay afloat, that’s a sign that their business model isn’t working and that they either need to adjust or leave the practice entirely. If they are self-sufficient, then they don’t need the money in the first place.

Even if you accept the case for farm support in the abstract, however, you have to be mortified at how it plays out in practice. As Susan Ferrechio notes in the Washington Examiner:

To illustrate just how far the subsidy program has strayed from its original purpose, [watchdog group] Open the Books calculated payments going to three major cities with few, if any, modern ties to farming: Washington, D.C., New York City and Chicago. Taxpayers sent $30 million to those residents over the past four years to compensate them for converting farmland to conservation areas and for growing soybeans, cotton, corn, rice and other crops.

The big-city farm subsidies show that savvy landowners are legally maximizing a return on their real estate investments at the expense of taxpayers, [Open the Books founder Adam] Andrzejewski said. They buy land, hire a farm manager and collect a check from the federal government, he said.

This would be a good time to remember Nancy Pelosi’s complaint during last fall’s budget negotiations: “The cupboard is bare. There’s [sic] no more cuts to make.” Perhaps the cupboard deserves another look.