Republicans talk about cutting welfare for the poor. Democrats talk about hiking taxes on the rich.
Here’s a compromise: cut welfare for the rich. One place to start would be farm subsidies.
The Environmental Working Group reports:
(Disclosure: One of the billionaires on the list is Philip Anschutz, who owns the Washington Examiner. Two farms owned by Anschutz hauled a combined $600,000 in federal crop subsidies between 1995 and 2003, but none in the past decade.)
Amazingly, Congress is on the verge of exacerbating this problem with a rejiggered subsidy program that could increase costs to taxpayers while increasing the subsidy to banks that lend to farms.
This is a pattern: Government gets involved in an industry, and the wealthy and well connected benefit.
