Farm bill ends subsidies, cuts food stamps

[twoguns?]

Are we really subsidizing the tobacco farmers with public money?

Yep....8/

 

[aestus]

If the .gov didn't have a hand in the regulation of prices, then you would have a case.

Farms have a hard time making ends meet because the price of milk, beef, and other produce is partially government regulated.

Yes, food is a necessity. But if you are willing to forgo the ability to grow it yourself, and pay someone else to do it; then that person should be able to make a reasonable living doing so.

People scream about farm subsidies and Gov setting prices... until the price of milk rises to $8 a gallon and $100 worth of groceries become $300 worth of groceries

 

[twoguns?]

People scream about farm subsidies and Gov setting prices... until the price of milk rises to $8 a gallon and $100 worth of groceries become $300 worth of groceries

So pretty much .."the consumer"....is pretty much screwed?..8/

 

[Billybob]

Meanwhile, the bill ensures that the federal government will avoid re-implementing a 1940s era subsidy program that could have caused the price of milk to double to $7 a gallon from the current national average of $3.50.

http://fox43.com/2014/01/28/farm-bill-ends-subsidies-cuts-food-stamps/#bodyTag

 

[Billybob]

The nearly 1,000-page compromise farm bill is designed to have something for everyone. There's more money for crop insurance popular in the Midwest, higher peanut and rice subsidies for Southern farmers and the renewal of federal land payments for Western states.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-28-15-37-06

 

[LightningCrash]

Price of food is going to skyrocket now.

It still will cost about the same, even if the sticker price is double.

I'm having a bit of fun with it, I hope you can see.

 

[Lurker66]

The nearly 1,000-page compromise farm bill is designed to have something for everyone. There's more money for crop insurance popular in the Midwest, higher peanut and rice subsidies for Southern farmers and the renewal of federal land payments for Western states.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/storie...ME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-28-15-37-06

So we save $21 a month only to spend $42.....we should elect more congressmen.

 

[SoonerP226]

Are we really subsidizing the tobacco farmers with public money?

AFAIK, the only 50-state legal commercial crop in the US that doesn't have some sort of Federal assistance/subsidy/insurance/interference is hay.

 

[henschman]

Some of you are saying that we can't get rid of this bit of government intervention because of problems raised by other sorts of prior government intervention. This leaves only one way for things to move -- toward more government intervention.

It's not too complicated, the way I see it -- cut any government intervention we can get enough political support for, and then when other interventions cause problems, put them next on the list to eliminate. You have to start somewhere, and it is not feasible to eliminate all government intervention overnight. This is the only realistic path toward individual liberty and a voluntary society.

 

[mons meg]

We pay too MUCH for milk under current .gov policies that set price floors, also....see here:

http://www.cato.org/blog/farm-bill-spending-49-percent

Under cover of SOTU media coverage, Congress is set to sneak through the first big farm bill since 2008. The Congressional Budget Office released its estimate of the bill’s cost: $956 billion over 2014-2023. It would thus mean almost $1 trillion more borrowed from U.S. and foreign creditors, adding more weight to the anchor pulling down the living standards of our children and grandchildren.

If you are a reporter, please don’t write that the farm bill “slashes” anything. Even according to the official score, it just trims $16.5 billion from expected spending of $956 billion over the decade, which is just 1.7 percent. The food stamp (“nutrition”) portion of the bill trims just $8 billion from expected spending of $756 billion, which is just 1.1 percent.

However, the 2014 farm bill is not a cut at all when compared to the 2008 farm bill, which was projected to cost $640 billion over 10 years. That is a 49 percent spending increase.

Sure, the new bill shuffles the farm subsidy deck chairs, but the bill’s main budget attribute is that it ratifies the huge recent increase in food stamp spending. The House bill had proposed trimming a modest $39 billion (5 percent) from food stamps, but Republican leaders caved in and agreed to just a token 1 percent trim in the final bill.

More of the same old "cuts" that SHOULD read "Cuts to what we were wanting to spend"