Friend,
Imagine you own and operate a bakery called the Hard Luck Bakery. Your competitor down the road is called the Sunny Slope Bakery.
One day the government comes to the Sunny Slope Bakery and says, "I'll sell you $100,000 worth of flour for $4,974, and we'll do it every year. Tax free!" Pretty good deal, huh?
Now imagine you hear about the sweetheart deal provided to the Sunny Slope Bakery and you want the same. So you go to the government office and ask, "Can I buy $100,000 worth of flour for $4,974 too, just like Sunny Slope Bakery?" But the government says, "No. You are not on the list and you will never be on the list. Only the elite few are on the list."
So each and every year, Sunny Slope Bakery is subsidized by the federal government to the tune of $100,000. And it is tax-free. And it puts Sunny Slope Bakery at a huge competitive advantage over the Hard Luck Bakery.
The owners of the Hard Luck Bakery would probably call that welfare.
Of course, we're not talking about a bakery here; we're talking about the federal grazing rights held by Nebraska State Senator Deb Fischer -- now running for Nebraska's U.S. Senate seat against Bob Kerrey.
For years, this rancher has been complaining about the size of the federal government, the budget deficits, and the need to cut federal spending. She's been spouting all the Tea Party rhetoric you can muster. She certainly doesn't want the federal government subsidizing health care for low wage earners.
Fischer wants to deny regular people the help they need, but Fischer herself is a "welfare rancher."
Fischer's hypocrisy on the role of government is just too much to ignore. But what is worse: the hypocrisy, or the fact that the program operates for the elite few at the loss of $120 million per year?
Despite her eagerness to cut vital middle-class programs, Fischer refuses to support an amendment to the Farm Bill that would put grazing deals like hers in line with private sector price. If the federal government had sold these grazing lands at fair market value, it would have generated more than $342 million in revenue in 2011.
She thinks her welfare program should be exempt from cuts, while forcing the rest of us to deal with a $1.1 trillion deficit on our own.
To win over the voters of Nebraska -- and win this election -- we need to build public awareness of hypocrisy like this. Your electronic signature on this petition will make a vital difference.
Thanks for supporting Bob,
Paul Johnson
Campaign Manager
Nebraskans for Kerrey
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