One of the things that can happen when you vote against your own economic interests:
President Bush will seek deep cuts in farm and commodity programs in his new budget and will propose overall limits on subsidy payments to farmers, administration officials said Saturday.
Such limits would help reduce the federal budget deficit and would inject market forces into the farm economy, the administration says.
The proposal puts Mr. Bush at odds with some of his most ardent supporters in the rural South, including cotton and rice growers in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
To be fair, there's nothing wrong with voting against your own interests. Wealthy liberals do it all the time. Hell, they would whole-heartedly support a President who would raise their taxes again. It's called principle, and integrity. But I'm not sure if some of the farmers and Agribusiness saw this sort of thing coming. It's one thing to vote against your interests when you know those interests will be hurt in some vage way (less money for schools, fighting crime, aid to the poor, etc.) and quite another to vote against them when they're going to be hurt in a very real, very concrete way. And I'm sure this comes as quite a surprise to the Agribusiness that donated to Bush's campaign, and the farmers that turned out to vote for him. It's hard lesson to learn, that you may support your President, but his support of you comes after his other political interests.
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Good call. However, on the issue of agricultural subsidies I actually agree with Brian Riedl here.
"Although farm subsidies are justified as helping struggling family farmers make ends meet, the bulk of subsidy payments goes to the largest high-income farms. In fact, current farm policy allocates two out of every three farm subsidy dollars to the top 10 percent of subsidy recipients while completely shutting 60 percent of farmers out of subsidy programs."
I'm for ending most or all of types of corporate welfare, and he makes a pretty strong case for reform on this too.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/BG1520.cfm
Ha, I guess the Heritage Foundation had to be right at some point.
I agree too. Most reasonable people do, but subsidies have been hard to eliminate because of the myth that they go to the average farmer whose working just to survive. But I guess you can't make ALL your corporate sponsors happy.
This issue is kind of like the estate tax. It doesn't really matter, but Repubs whip people into a frenzy by convincing them that the Democrats are out to steal your money. Never mind that most people don't benefit from subsidies or that most people aren't hurt by an estate tax, what matters is that the Repubs say they are.
Post a Comment