SWEET-Heart Deal for Sugar Companies

The Left has had many targets over the past several decades, targets that they have made into scapegoats to advance their collectivist economic agenda. These targets have included “Big Tobacco,” “Big Pharmaceuticals,” and “Big Oil;” however, they’ve now taken it to the level of the absurd: “Big Candy.” The American Sugar Alliance, the lobbying organization responsible for decades of sweetheart deals paid for by the taxpayers, realizes that public support for their taxpayer funded slush fund is running low. As a result, they are attempting to muddy the waters long enough to get the Farm Bill reauthorized; they’ve started demonizing candy producers as “Big Candy,” in an obvious attempt to paint them as exploitative and unfair, themes the Left always uses when they’re really implementing exploitation and unfairness.

The reason the American Sugar Alliance is attacking “Big Candy” is that so-called “Big Candy” is telling the American people the truth: that everything from candy bars to Coke costs more because sugar prices are inflated by government intervention. This intervention comes in the form of governmental purchases of sugar crops, which artificially inflate demand, thus driving up costs to everyday consumers. This means that sugar farmers have enjoyed a windfall profit in the form of higher sugar prices, paid for by the rest of us. In this way, Americans are getting hit twice: we are taxed to the tune of billions to pay for these bailouts, and then we get to pay the higher sugar prices these bailouts create. Sounds like a raw deal for raw sugar.

When Democrats pitch a fit that Americans are drinking too much corn syrup in soda, we should remind them why we drink corn syrup in soda in the first place. In virtually every other industrialized country soft drinks are made with real sugar, which is far healthier than the highly processed gunk that is corn syrup. In America, however, we drink soft drinks made with corn syrup because cane sugar simply costs too much. This higher price isn’t because sugar isn’t produced in abundance in America; just the opposite is true. It’s that “Big Sugar” and big government have colluded to benefit one another, at the expense of the American people.

I’ve always found it fascinating that lobbyists who brand private enterprise “big,” in an attempt to engender sympathy for the little guy, never realize that their “little guy” is really the biggest scam in the country. Sugar producers in the American Sugar Alliance get billions in additional profits, out of which they pay millions in campaign donations to politicians, and all of us working in the real world get stuck with the tab.

Call your members of Congress and tell them to vote “NO” on reauthorizing the Farm Bill in this session.