After a year full of victories for big government legislation in Congress, the forces of statism seemed to have met their Waterloo with the farm/food stamp bill. The more people learned of the profligate food stamp spending and the market distorting, risk-inducing agriculture programs contained in the bill, the more they spoke out against this monstrosity. Speaker Boehner has refused to bring the bill to | Read More »
Dear Speaker Boehner, During every election cycle, virtually every Republican candidate affirms his or her support for limited government, free markets, and balanced budgets. They all tout their conservative credentials on the flashy flag-waving issues of the day in an effort to ingratiate themselves with Republican primary voters. However, it is the “inside baseball” issues such as the farm bill that expose many of them | Read More »
Last week, the House Agriculture Committee marked up the preposterous $957 billion farm/food stamp bill (H.R. 6083). Despite the media reports about severe cuts to the food stamp program, this bill actually locks in the appalling levels of spending established in the Obama-era. In many respects, the committee votes from last week shed light on the problem we have with many red state statists within | Read More »
While we are struggling to repeal the government takeover of healthcare, a bipartisan bicameral group of politicians are further entrenching government control of Agriculture. They are also agreeing to enshrine Obama’s food stamp spending into the welfare system indefinitely. We have witnessed a robust counteroffensive against the farm/food stamp bill among great writers and policy makers in the conservative movement. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many | Read More »
Yesterday, Erick mentioned a revolutionary one-stop website designed to hold Republican House members accountable for their voting records. The Madison Project unveiled ConservativeVotingRecords. Com, which houses a simple yet novel index that compares the voting records to the ideological bent of the member’s district. The results are not pretty. 52 members who hail from solid Republican districts scored 20 points below where they should be | Read More »
Here’s a novel idea: let’s stop subsidizing Big Sugar. Maybe if the government wouldn’t intervene in the agriculture sector, inducing sharp increases in the price of commodities, many of the 46 million people on food stamps would be able to afford food. Then again, why would liberal politicians abrogate their source of political power? They stand to benefit from subsidizing rich sugar farmers and keeping | Read More »
There is perhaps nothing as destructive to the free market as the federal government’s stranglehold over the agriculture sector. There is also nothing as detrimental to the GOP’s ability to draw a bold contrast on free markets, dependency, spending, and crony capitalism, as their willingness to support 5-year farm bills. Current farm policy creates inveterate dependency in some of the most conservative corners of the | Read More »
Update: 16 Republican Senators voted to empower Harry Reid and expand Food Stamps. It is now up to House members to demand a full floor vote with amendments to this bill. Last week, we noted that Harry Reid, with the help of Republican leadership, is attempting to come late to the 2012 budget game and commandeer the entire process through a series of ‘minibus’ bills. | Read More »
The loss of jobs is only half of the result of the government interventionist equation. The other casualty of an economy driven by taxation, regulation, litigation, subsidization, monetary intervention, and debt is the crippling cost of living for all Americans. [Yes, I was about to say middle class, but we would be wise to eradicate that sort of socialist innuendo from our vernacular.] Earlier today, the | Read More »
Wholesale Food Prices Highest since 74′ Food Stamps Surge in West These two headlines are quintessential examples of the perennial cycle of government intervention. They offer a vivid portrayal of how the Democrats perfidiously inflate the price of food so that the maximum number of people will be dependent upon their food programs, thus granting them a permanent electoral constituency. Obama and the Democrat economists | Read More »
The Democrats have thrived in public office since FDR by cementing their power through the perpetuation of government and subsidization of poverty. Pick an industry and the name of the game is the same. They blow up the private sector through any mix of taxation, regulation, and litigation. Then, as jobs are cut and the cost of the good or service of that industry skyrockets, | Read More »
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