Coalition Letter: Taxpayers Won’t Harvest Farm Bill Savings

Eleven policy and taxpayer groups, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, sent a joint letter today to Members of Congress urging them not to include a bloated Farm Bill as part of a deficit reduction package. As the letter notes,

“The full House hasn’t even considered a Farm Bill. Amendments will not be allowed. Only in Washington can a more than 500 page, $1 trillion bill be called deficit reduction and slapped onto legislation to deal with the real budgetary challenges of sequestration and tax hikes.”

The letter pointed out that the inclusion of the Farm Bill represents bad policy and bad politics:

“Budget gimmicks and back room legislating is part of what got the country into this fiscal mess.  Taxpayers deserve a simple and transparent solution to the fiscal cliff, not a bloated, over priced Farm Bill that writes a blank check from the Treasury to a sector experiencing its two most profitable years in a generation.”

The eleven groups signing on were American Commitment, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Citizens Against Government Waste, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Cost of Government Center, FreedomWorks, National Taxpayers Union, R St,  Taxpayers for Commonsense, and Taxpayers Protection Alliance.