“The anticipated amount of money that was gonna go out of these programs fell far short of actually what was going out, so it seems to me that there’s some extra money there that had been budgeted that could be used perhaps to provide that relief.”

– Representative Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) discussing the Dairy Margin Protection Program at a House Committee on Agriculture hearing February 15, 2017

Gotta love Congressional accounting.

Agricultural income subsidy programs created by the 2014 Farm Bill are exploding in cost. The most recent estimates released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) place the price tag at $56 billion. That’s $24 billion more than predicted when the programs were created.

Yet instead of focusing on common sense efforts to rein in the costs of these entitlements, many members of the House Committee on Agriculture spent time complaining not enough money is being spent on dairy farmers.

Only in Washington would someone look at $24 billion in unexpected costs and $600 million in savings and conclude that the savings is the problem.

Taxpayer balance sheet from 2014 farm bill agricultural income subsidy programs

$24.072 billion extra cost – $615 million savings = $23.457 billion in “extra money” leaving the Treasury.

Looks more like taxpayers are the ones in need of relief.