The Farm Bill is a bane of we Conservatives existence - and Reality-based policymaking. It is a relic of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)s horrendously failed New Deal - a top-down central-planning nightmare mess.
And over the last eighty-plus years FDRs heinous domestic policy has gone global. A worldwide farm market has arisen. We no longer just grow for ourselves. We sell all over - and they sell to us.
And our Farm Bill - which warps our market - has warped the worlds as well. FDR helped beget an eight-decade-long international regulatory arms race. Other produce-producing nations saw our lattice-work panoply of tariffs and subsidies - and felt compelled to match them. And then exceed them.
Round and round we go. Myriad nations outdo our government interference in the marketplace - so we outdo theirs. Lather rinse repeat. So what we now have is a global lattice-work panoply of tariffs and subsidies. A thicket that grows ever thicker - as each next government tries to outdo the last.
We take our swing every half decade - when our heinous Farm Bill comes up for Congressional renewal. A $1 trillion redux passed last year.
We Conservatives tried then to do what we always try to do - unilaterally kill it. And we were just as successful then as we always have been - not at all.
So lets try something new shall we?
Weve spent the better part of a century erecting ever-higher walls of trade impediment. And watching the worlds nations do the same. It would seem we need to work together to tear down those walls.
Heres a start of that deconstruction.
Rep. Ted Yoho R-Fla. reintroduced a bill Friday that encourages the (Barack Obama) administration to target foreign sugar subsidies. Under the Zero-for-Zero" plan U.S. sugar policy would also be rolled back in exchange for the elimination of foreign programs which Yoho says are distorting world prices and inhibiting a free market.
Congressman Yoho is of course absolutely correct. Weve been distorting world prices and inhibiting a free market" for decades - and on oh-so-much-more than merely sugar.
Heres hoping the Administration makes this move - and on oh-so-much-more than merely sugar.
Its way past time we end this fossilized facet of FDRs New Deal. Both here - and abroad.
The Farm Bill is a bane of we Conservatives existence - and Reality-based policymaking. It is a relic of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)s horrendously failed New Deal - a top-down central-planning nightmare mess.
And over the last eighty-plus years FDRs heinous domestic policy has gone global. A worldwide farm market has arisen. We no longer just grow for ourselves. We sell all over - and they sell to us.
And our Farm Bill - which warps our market - has warped the worlds as well. FDR helped beget an eight-decade-long international regulatory arms race. Other produce-producing nations saw our lattice-work panoply of tariffs and subsidies - and felt compelled to match them. And then exceed them.
Round and round we go. Myriad nations outdo our government interference in the marketplace - so we outdo theirs. Lather rinse repeat. So what we now have is a global lattice-work panoply of tariffs and subsidies. A thicket that grows ever thicker - as each next government tries to outdo the last.
We take our swing every half decade - when our heinous Farm Bill comes up for Congressional renewal. A $1 trillion redux passed last year.
We Conservatives tried then to do what we always try to do - unilaterally kill it. And we were just as successful then as we always have been - not at all.
So lets try something new shall we?
Weve spent the better part of a century erecting ever-higher walls of trade impediment. And watching the worlds nations do the same. It would seem we need to work together to tear down those walls.
Heres a start of that deconstruction.
Rep. Ted Yoho R-Fla. reintroduced a bill Friday that encourages the (Barack Obama) administration to target foreign sugar subsidies. Under the Zero-for-Zero" plan U.S. sugar policy would also be rolled back in exchange for the elimination of foreign programs which Yoho says are distorting world prices and inhibiting a free market.
Congressman Yoho is of course absolutely correct. Weve been distorting world prices and inhibiting a free market" for decades - and on oh-so-much-more than merely sugar.
Heres hoping the Administration makes this move - and on oh-so-much-more than merely sugar.
Its way past time we end this fossilized facet of FDRs New Deal. Both here - and abroad.