The Corner:I just had a chance to go back and look at their answers the other night. Boy, they were bad. Both of them made the ludicrous national security argument—supposedly if we don't subsidize food, we'll be at the mercy of other countries at dinnertime. Both of them argued that we had to keep subsidizing agriculture because other countries do it. We have to keep stealing from American taxpayers and consumers, in other words, because other countries do it to their citizens too. I know this makes political sense, but still—ugh.We had a brief discussion on this on the radio show and in a thread here at WMD... I agree with Ramesh on this one. These answers sucked...BIG TIME...as VP Cheney might say...
Michael Grunwald over at TIME reports that farm incomes are at an all-time high. Yet, here we are continuing to smack around the taxpayer and the top-tier Republican candidates for president can't manage a a simple statement that we've gone overboard in these subsidies.
Once again, let me say that I am all for a safety net to make sure that our nation's farmers are protected from financial ruination, but let's not pretend that business isn't a risk. Corporate welfare is corporate welfare and I'm against that.
What say you?
UPDATE: Rudy is on his "fiscal conservatism" bit again today...
