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The New Farm Bill Will Cost You 22 Hours of Your Labor

17 December 2007

The Senate just passed a Farm Bill that will cost $286,000,000,000. Now there are roughly 100,000,000 active taxpayers in this country, defined by me as people who pay IRS taxes. If you are in the roughly 30% that don’t pay income taxes I am not counting you.

This is a 5 year bill and if we assume you make $50,000 a year, you will work to pay off this bill for approximately 22 hours each year.

How did our guys vote?:

Yes: Murphy, Larsen, DeLauro, Courtney, Lieberman

No: Shays! (Our lone Republican!)

Missing the vote: DODD (how pathetic! You can’t even pander right.)

What will you buy with your labor?

Increased ethanol production, lots of increased ethanol production. Iowa is a big winner here. Mitt, Rudy, Chris, Hill, Obama, et all are all in Iowa quoting corn prices. Hey it pays to have five US Senators.

Absent government favoritism, it’s unlikely that “investment” in ethanol would be more than tiny fraction of its present level. I just love it when government uses that word “investment”, it just sounds so much like a fleecing is coming.

If ethanol is just a great thing, why isn’t in the Energy Bill and not in the Farm Bill?

One really good thing about Ethanol it just might make high fructose corn syrup so expensive that is does not end up in all my food.

The Heritage Foundation has a good article on the fleecing you are about to receive.

America’s largest corporate welfare program: In 2001, three-quarters of farm subsidies went to just 10 percent of farms, most of which have annual incomes above $250,000. In contrast, the bottom 80 percent of farmers received just one-eighth of subsidies.

Despite passing free market reforms in 1996, this farm bill reads like a Soviet-style 5-year plan. It brings back centralized planning in agriculture, and will prevent American agriculture from becoming the vibrant, creative, dynamic force needed to compete in 21st century global markets.

Even if one accepts the current cost estimates, the farm bill’s combined cost in taxes and higher food prices will be approximately $462 billion over 10 years–which is more than the federal government will spend on education and environmental protection combined. This tab will leave the average household with $4,377 less to spend on necessities such as mortgage payments, health insurance, retirement savings, or their children’s education.

The Heritage Foundation puts the cost at $462,000,000,000 over ten years, this includes calculated hidden costs such as the cost of lost opportunity and secondary effects such as this bill will raise the prices of items you buy such as food and GAS.

Oh, yes it will increase our oil imports, you need oil to make ethanol.

God, I hate ethanol.

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