Farm bill: Senate candidates: Farm bill vital to N.D.
August 10, 2012 at 12:54 am in The Jamestown Sun
The two North Dakota candidates for the U.S. Senate agree that the farm bill is vital to the state.
“Agriculture is one of the bright spots in the American economy,” said Rep. Rick Berg, R-N.D. “Agriculture is creating revenue, jobs and opportunity. The last thing we want is uncertainty.”
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Let it expire.
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The Farm Bill should not contain items for welfare, energy, broadband, housing, etc. and everything should stand on its own in any future bills to better control costs and eliminate the special interests and self-serving items being added. Farmers should not have their needs controlled by Food Stamps or other items and battles regarding help for a separate entity. A Farm Bill should be based upon Farmers needs or merits and nothing else. The other side is SNAP should not be dependent upon Farmers needs and those battles and should also be based upon its needs or merits and nothing else.
A prime example of accommodating self-serving entities is The Senate Bill in this section: SEC. 12211. DEFINITION OF RURAL AREA FOR PURPOSES OF THE HOUSING ACT OF 1949 would increase the pool of recipients and also increased rural community population requirement to 35,000. This population level would be a small City not a true rural community. Also, changing the Census date to 2020 insures those who have already received fair share of benefits over past years and now self-sufficient to continue receiving such benefits. This means less money available to true rural area communities, because others would continue receiving more after they are now self-sufficient and no longer rural.
With only X amount of dollars available the Senate wants to add more communities with their hands out looking for more. The Senate would be adding to our country’s problem instead of politely informing those areas that they have already received their share and it is now other smaller communities turn to receive those benefits. That is the purpose of rural programs to help very small struggling communities grow and become self-sufficient, not to become a welfare system for self-sufficient communities who have already received past benefits wanting more.
Enough is enough … the Farm Bill is antiquated with too much past garbage and needs to die. Legislators can then implement separate meaningful cost effective measures to address various problems or needs and keep it simple for future review as needed.
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