Catfish Oversight, Weather Radios And A Christmas Tree Tax: Meet The Pork-Filled $956 BILLION Farm Bill
- ” The massive five-years agriculture spending plan, signed Friday by President Obama, includes a $3 million plan for Christmas tree taxes
- Most of the bill covers food stamps, with the number of benefit recipients doubling since Obama took office
- The U.S. will spend $1 billion per year loaning money to sugar barons so they can keep prices stable and avoid overseas competition
- Another $100 million will go to study how to get Americans to buy more maple syrup
- $1 million will buy weather radios for rural Americans, despite plunging hundreds of weather apps for smartphones and plunging access rates”
” The federal government pays for a $15 million ‘wool trust fund,’ runs a $170 million program to protect catfish growers from overseas competition, sets aside $3 million to promote Christmas trees, funds another $2 million to help farmers sell more sheep, and plunks down $100 million researching how to get Americans to buy more maple syrup.
And that spending is just three one-hundredths of one per cent of the Farm Bill that President Barack Obama signed Friday in Michigan.
Liberal and conservative watchdogs alike are hopping mad at what they say are pork-barrel projects included in the five-year agriculture spending law as home-state perks to lawmakers that are unneeded or redundant.
There’s a new 15-cent levy on every live-cut Christmas tree, a proposal that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had blocked but will now be beyond his control. Tree growers will put the money into a fund for ‘industry-funded promotion, research, and information program[s],’ but the cost will inevitably be passed on to consumers.”
While there is plenty of pork to feed Congress’ corporate cronies the lion’s share of the “Farm” bill goes to foster government dependency for the individual …
” One in five American households receive food stamps today. More than 1 million people were added to the rolls in 2013, including residents who live in the country illegally.
In the year 2000 the entire food stamp program cost $17 billion. Last year that figure was $78 billion.
The rest of the Farm Bill, all $200 billion of it, includes some subsidy payments to members of Congress and their families who are engaged in agriculture.”
Read the rest if you can stomach it .
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