Opinion

Artificial sweetener

Mike Collins Former Spokesman, RNC
Font Size:

House Republicans could recover their fumble of the farm bill by blocking a job-killing protectionist scheme that adds to the grocery bill of every American family.

The sugar subsidy program is a gooey mix of Depression-era price supports and import quotas, with a separate sugar-for-ethanol boondoggle thrown in for good measure.

The program is one of Washington’s sweetest examples of corporate welfare. It walls off 85 percent of the American sugar market for the exclusive enjoyment of 4,700 domestic beet and sugar cane growers and forces foreign competitors (whose sugar sells for nearly 50 percent less) to fight with one another over what’s left.

The scheme was threatened when, under NAFTA, Mexico was given unlimited access to the U.S. sugar market, creating a sugar glut that has caused prices to fall below the targets of the USDA’s central planners.

Not to worry. Always eager to hand a sweet deal to well-heeled sugar growers, Congress jerry-rigged a separate sugar-support program that will force taxpayers this year to buy 400,000 tons of the unprofitable domestic white stuff at inflated prices so the USDA can sell it to ethanol producers at a loss to the taxpayers of about $80 million. Sweet, huh?

The result is a market distortion that would be the pride of the Politburo. Sugar producers’ profits are propped up to the tune of $1.4 billion a year regardless of their global competitiveness, while American households pay $2.4 billion more for nearly everything they eat and drink.

If Congress really wants to stretch the value of its food stamp dollars, killing the sugar program would be a sure-fire way to do it.

In each of the last four years, domestic sugar prices have been directly inflated by 64 to 92 percent, and nearly every year since 1970, Americans have paid almost twice as much for sugar as they would in an open marketplace.

As Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey observed, “We subsidize a handful of wealthy sugar growers at the expense of everybody in America.”

The program has also forced thousands of good-paying American factory jobs to move offshore. One 2006 study estimated that the sugar program cost 10,000 jobs between 1997 and 2002 alone, with three confectionery manufacturing jobs lost for every one created in the sugar cane and beet fields. Needless to say, there ain’t much comparison between a decent factory job and work in the sugar canes.

Like most of Washington’s experiments in economic planning, this one ultimately owes its survival to the campaign donations of the sugar industry. Democrats and Republicans alike live in a Candy Land of Big Sugar cash that Willy Wonka could only dream of.

According to OpenSecrets.org, sugar beet and cane producers lavished an incredible $41 million on federal candidates and party committees since 1990. In 2012 alone, they spent $5.3 million, nearly equally divided between the two parties.

Big Sugar’s paid lobbyists — and you can’t toss a coin on K Street without hitting one — protest that the program is not a “subsidy” because it doesn’t directly put money in the hands of the growers. Technically, they’re right: their convoluted scheme is much more insidious than that, an artificial sweetener that amounts to a shell game with American consumers playing the chump.

Twice in the last two years, the Senate turned its back on even the most minor reforms of the sugar program. How minor? The most recent amendment would have cut sugar’s price support from 18.75 cents per pound to 18.

Even this was too much for the sugar barons, whose minions killed the amendment by a vote of 54 to 45, with 20 of the Senate’s Republicans voting against it. As votes go, profiles in courage it wasn’t.

With Congress’s approval rating about to enter single digits — the Ebola virus may be more popular — it’s time for House Republicans to stage a dramatic “Sister Souljah Moment” with one of Washington’s biggest special interests.

Go on a sugar-free diet by ending the sugar price supports and trade restrictions altogether — and while you’re at it, eliminate the sugar-for-ethanol scam as well.

If Washington is so intent on picking winners and losers, the least it can do is put American households in the winners’ circle for a change.

Mike Collins is a former national spokesman for the Republican National Committee who now runs a public relations firm with offices in Tampa and Washington, D.C.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel