LITTLE ROCK - U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln, Chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said today she opposes the farm subsidy program because it would be too expensive.
“For some in my caucus, when they talk about a farm subsidy program they’re talking about another entitlement program, and we can’t afford that right now as a nation,” Lincoln said in a speech to the Elder Law Task Force at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.
Lincoln has said previously she would support whatever farm subsidy program worked, but she indicated Tuesday that a plan including an expensive, government-funded, corporate welfare subsidy program would not get her vote.
“I’m not going to vote for a bill that’s not deficit-neutral, and I’m not going to vote for a bill that doesn’t do something about curbing the cost in the out years, because it would be pointless … I would not support a solely government-funded farm subsidy program. We can’t afford that,” Lincoln told reporters before her speech. "I have also pledged that farm subsidies will not add to our deficit over the next decade - and I mean it."
“One of our biggest concerns is that it doesn’t need to be a government plan that usurps that ability to compete in the marketplace, which I’m concerned that a totally government-run farm subsidy program would do,” she said. “The private agribusiness corporations are walking away with all the assets, and the government ends up holding all the risk.”
What the . . . Why Miss Blanche, we hardly knew ye!
ReplyDeleteNice Jonah. Absolutely right on target.
ReplyDeleteBlanche Lincoln has a special logic that allows her to spend freely with our money when it goes to her planter friends and family but not when it might help improve the lives of the least among us.
ReplyDeleteMatthew 25:40
.
ReplyDeleteAnd for my next trick I'm going to pull a great
BIG ELEPHANT MASK out of this little hat.
.
She speaks with a "Forked tounge"
ReplyDeleteBlanche has lost Eastern Arkansas. This is the part of the State the she use to take for granted.
ReplyDeleteLet this be a lesson for all the "D's"
AND MANURE ISN'T TOXIC WASTE EITHER--Sayeth Ms. Lincoln.
ReplyDelete--which is just another way of subsidizing bad corporate agri. of course.
TAKE MY SENATOR, NOW
PLEASE?
.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Blanche is running scared because of
THIS.
.
Thank you Blanche for voting against socialized medicine. Why wouldn't she? The majority of her constituents are against it and this bankrupt country can't afford it!
ReplyDeleteC.H.--
ReplyDeleteSocialized medicine is not what is being discussed, much as the benighted frame the issue in such terms. And, while most of her high-dollar contributors are probably against health-care reform, most of her constituents are in favor of health-care reform.
Once you get past your confusion on (or willful misunderstanding of) those two points, do post again.
The citizens of the United States can't survive the current abuse being wrought on them by the insurance companies and some of the vested-interest owners of health facilities.
ReplyDeleteIt would cost the taxpayers less and thus the government less to create a publicly funded healthcare plan.
This "bankrupt country" currently subsidizes insurance companies almost as heavily as it continues to subsidize Bush's "regime change" in all of the middle east.
A "public option" is a minimum. Healthcare in the 21st century is a public utility that must be publicly funded to ensure the ability of all residents of our nation to get treatment for what may ail them. It is a national security issue to keep our populace as healthy as possible.
Anyone who enters a healthcare facility should have nothing to show but his ID card so that his health history can be found before treatment gets past the emergency stage.