Larger text
Smaller textGet(ting) milk(ed)
It expired on Sept. 30 but word is it could be restored. This would be good news for the Pennsylvania Republican who is badly trailing state Treasurer Bob Casey in next year's probable Senate match-up.
The small dairy farmer is the rugged, rural individualist who believes it's the tax-paying public's obligation to cover his losses in bad years so he can stay in business. The program would cost $1 billion over two years.
Bad years, of course, are those when too much milk is produced, depressing prices, because subsidies set the stage for overproduction.
This is the "genius" of agricultural subsidies and tariff-rate quotas that benefited farmers large and small by $46 billion in 2004. The government is managing the market instead of allowing the market to manage itself.
One of the outcrops is higher food prices that the poorest Americans cannot afford.
Mr. Santorum has described the Milk Income Loss Contract as a "little program to help the little guy, who's living out there in rural America trying to make ends meet."
One of the purposes of such statements is to get all the "little guys" watered by Santorum at the taxpayer-filled trough to vote for the "big guy."
It's standard politics. But Senator, it's lousy economics.
