Representative Steve Chabot (R-OH) today offered two separate amendments to the House Agriculture spending bill that would eliminate funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Market Access Program (MAP), a program that provides funds for overseas promotion of American agricultural products.

“Representative Chabot should be commended for his courageous stand against this wasteful spending that often benefits big agribusinesses that do not need taxpayer handouts,” said  Jill Lancelot Legislative Director of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based budget watchdog group.

Rep. Chabot's amendments would eliminate funding for MAP and strike Section 741 of the Agriculture Appropriations bill that would again allow MAP to subsidize the mink industry's overseas promotional efforts. Eliminating the program would save the taxpayer $450 million over five years.

“Americans do not need a taxpayer funded advertising agency for our agricultural products,” continued Lancelot. Why should taxpayers have to foot the bill for an industry that can obviously afford to pay for its own advertising?”

In the past ten years, the federal government has spent more than $1.5 billion of taxpayer money on the MAP program, which funds consumer-related promotions for many agricultural projects through trade shows, advertising campaigns and other marketing tactics.

A 1999 report by the non-partisan U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) concluded that MAP's benefits are overstated, since it is difficult to evaluate how U.S. products would perform abroad without the government subsidy.

“The MAP program has done little to guarantee that funds increase overseas promotional activities rather than simply replace private funds that would have been spent anyway,” said Lancelot.

Program reforms in 1996 set out to limit MAP funding to small businesses, agricultural cooperatives, and trade groups. But MAP recipients still include large trade organizations and cooperatives, such as Sunkist and the American Forest and Paper Association.

The Market Access Program has not yet developed criteria for graduating commercial firms from the program, according to the GAO.

“Although the number of large companies that receive MAP money has decreased, Congress still needs to figure out how to get these large companies and trade associations off the corporate welfare dole,” concluded Lancelot, “Rep. Chabot's amendment would do just that.”

For more information, please contact Keith Ashdown, (202) 546-8500 x110, or by email.