A SAD PRIMER IN HYPOCRISY

摘要

This being federal budget season, we'll hear stern lectures from the White House and congressional leaders of both parties about the need to return to surpluses and to maintain "fiscal discipline." You should greet these pronouncements skeptically for obvious reasons: pressures for new spending (defense, homeland security and a Medicare drug benefit) are intense; the willingness to raise taxes is slight, and the ability to cut existing spending? no matter how wasteful or unneeded―is virtually zilch. Government programs are, for all practical purposes, immortal. Anyone who doubts this last proposition should examine the farm-subsidy programs, which are the classic example of how unnecessary spending survives. It is a parable for our larger budget predicament. Every year the government sends out checks to about 700,000 to 900,000 farmers. Since 1978, federal outlays to support farmers' incomes have exceeded $300 billion. How large is that? Well, the publicly held federal debt (the result of past budget deficits) is about $3.3 trillion. The past two decades of farm subsidies equals almost 10 percent of the debt.