Budget Stupidity: Food Prices

Alright – their are several things I think government shouldn't be doing.

The following two programs are on the top of my list, and they go hand in hand:

Farmer Subsidies and Food Stamps.

I know, I must sound cruel and insensitive to farmers and the under-privileged – but am I the only one that realizes that these two institutions are counter-productive.

The Government has spent $177,589,000,000 between the years 1996 and 2006 to tell farmers not to grow food.

The official reason the program was started during the Great Depression was to keep food prices high to prevent all of the farmers from going bankrupt to the whims of foreign competition.

So, it keeps food prices artificially high, costing Americans more every year of the food they have to have.

Thats the first step…

…once you can't afford food according to the government list of qualifications, they will pay for your food.

The SNAP program, and other food stamp programs, cost an estimated 61.5 billion dollars in the 2010 budget. That is $61,500,000,000. That is NOT including the millions of dollars these programs received in the Obamanation Stimulus Plan of 2009.

That sounds great at first – but why is the food expensive?

Because they are MAKING it that way with the farm subsidies.

With one hand, they hand billions of dollars to the farmers not to grow in order to keep prices high and with the other hand they are handing billions of dollars to families that now cannot afford food because the farmers are not growing it.

And than here is the kicker – the Constitution does not give Congress the right to do ANY of this.

If Congress would simply LIVE BY THERE OATH OF OFFICE, we would not be handing billions upon trillions of dollars to people in this counter-productive cycle.