On The Necessity For Ending The Department Of Agriculture

From The Patriot Word:

Thursday, September 30, 2010Patriot Paper #2 Necessity For Ending the Department of Agriculture


Patriot Paper #2





Department of Agriculture: Unconstitutional, Arbitrary, and Expensive

By

Walter L Brown Jr



To People of the United States,



This is the second in a series of letters calling for significant changes in the United State's Federal Government to end Unconstitutional Activities and Restore the American Dream.



In the private sector, the USDA would be the sixth largest company in the United States with over:



•100,000 employees

•14,000 offices and field locations

•$128 billion in assets

•$77 billion in annual spending

The Department of Agriculture provides $100 billion of loans as well as significant guarantees and insurance in support of America's farmers and ranchers.





USDA’s total outlays for 2011 are estimated at $146 billion.



Roughly 80 percent of outlays, about $117 billion in 2011, are associated with mandatory programs that provide services as required by law. These include the majority of the nutrition assistance programs, farm commodity programs, export promotion programs and a number of conservation programs. The increase in mandatory outlays in 2011 is primarily due to nutrition assistance and crop insurance.



The remaining 20 percent of outlays, estimated at $29 billion in 2011, are associated with discretionary programs such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC); rural development loans and grants; research and education; soil and water conservation technical assistance; animal and plant health; management of National Forests, wildland fire, and other Forest Service activities; and domestic and international marketing assistance.



While size and cost are not postive attributes,they are not illegal. The problem with the USDA is that its activities are not within the scope of powers enumerated to Congress and as such, they are all illegal, benevolence and good intentions notwithstanding. The only potentially constitutional activities of the USDA are obligations associated with treaties ratified by congress pursuant to the Constitution, which could easily be handled by the Department of State.



James Madison, regarding benevolence and good intentions, said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article in the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents. With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”



No specific authority exists in Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution for establishing a United States Department of Agriculture. Considering the Ninth and Tenth Amendments it is clear that the power to regulate Agriculture has been reserved by the people and the states. A Department of Agriculture is not necessary to carry out any of the specifically enumerated powers of Congress delimited in Article I, Section 8 and is therefore forbidden short of a Constitutional Amendment to authorize it.



By and large the USDA transfers the fruits of the labors of one group to other groups, this is nothing more than pandering. Wealth redistribution systems like the USDA deprive people of their property without the benefit of a trial by jury (due process) and are specifically prohibited under the fifth and fourteenth amendment, being legal for neither federal, state nor any other government.



In addition to the unconstitutional character of the USDA it is an enormous duplication of effort as every state has a Department of Agriculture. There is even an organization "National Association of State Departments of Agriculture" through which state governments lobby the federal government.



Proponents of the USDA will point to its charitable benevolence on behalf of Women Infants and Children, Healthy Foods, Hunger and a host of other heartstring pullers as justifications for maintaining the USDA, ignore them they are offering socialism and slavery in place of capitalism, charity, and economic freedom. They are demanding our government participate in theft, without having any way of evaluating the damage they are doing. Even if a moral balance with perfect accuracy could be established depriving persons of their property against their will is theft plain and simple. Government structures that rely on an immoral activity to accomplish questionably moral net-outcomes has chosen luxury over rights and no longer serve the principle function of protecting the rights of the people. When a government no longer serves the purposes for which it was instituted, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it…

Posted by Walter L. Brown Jr. at 7:41 PM