Posted by
Dave Smith on Monday, April 06, 2009 8:41:50 PM
Want to know where the money confiscated from your paycheck is going? One example is the Department of Agriculture.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a
fiscal year 2009 budget of $95 billion.
Of that, $15 billion is for "rural development": rural utilities,
rural housing, and something called "Rural Business Cooperative
Service". Seriously? First of all, is "rural development" a
legitimate government function? Perusing the Constitution, I find no
justification for such an expense. But let's assume that "rural
utilities" were a legitimate government expense, do we really need
investment in utilities in 2009? Are there really that many people who
live in rural areas without homes or electricity?
Another 2% of
the USDA budget goes to something called "International" (getting drill
downs on budget specifics is not straightforward on the agency's
website). I can't imagine any good reason for $2 billion of taxpayer
money to go overseas for agricultural subsidies or programs.
The
vast majority (63%) of the department's budget goes to "nutritional
assistance" -- WIC, food stamps, and "child nutrition". Such
entitlement & welfare programs are a debate of their own, but at
least with this spending, somebody is ostensibly getting fed -- there's
a measurable output there. However, a closer look at the numbers is
telling. According to
Census Bureau data for 2007
(the latest available on their website), there were 37.3 million people
living in the official poverty designation. With the troubled economy,
let's assume that amount has increased to 40 million. The sum of
government "nutrition programs" is $61.8 billion ($6.3 billion for WIC,
$40.2 billion for food stamps, and $15.3 billion for "child
nutrition"). That means that every person living in poverty could be
issued a check for $1545 for food each year. That's per
person,
not per family. Thus, we're spending enough on food assistance to send
a family of four living in poverty a check for $6180 for food in 2009
-- that's a lot of groceries.
But let's assume that we want to
help not just those below the poverty line, but some people hovering
around it or slightly above. Extending food assistance to an
additional 20 million people would decrease the payment per person to
only $1030 -- still over $4 grand for a family of four, and this would
mean that 60 million people would be getting assistance buying food.
That's 20% of the country. Something tells me 20% of the country isn't
getting $1000 a year from the government for food, so that tells me we
could be much more efficient with our "nutrition spending".
But it gets worse: other government programs actually work to
increase
food prices (thus requiring, of course, higher payments to the poor to
help them buy food). For example, sugar import quotas and tariffs
increase the price of sugar. Domestic sugar producers pay big money in
lobbying the government each year to keep out foreign competition and
keep sugar prices high. There's another cost to such a program as
well: because sugar doesn't grow as plentifully in the US as it does
in, say, Brazil, sugar cane farmers here have to use more chemicals;
these chemicals pollute the environment. So the government is raising
the price of sugar and promoting pollution (which, of course, they will
then have to tax us to pay to clean up). The government also works to
increase the price of milk, and government policies raise the price of
food imported from other countries (for example: the recent closing of
Mexican truck access to American roads; this raises shipping costs,
thus increasing the price of food imported from Mexico). Ethanol
subsidies result in an increase in the price of corn.
With the
federal budget deficit predicted to approach $2 trillion, cutting on a
$100 billion cabinet agency may seem like wasted time. However,
cutting a department that has so much obvious waste and inefficiency,
enacts policies that hurt American consumers, and has at best
questionable Constitutional mandate seems like a great place to start.