#50

350 Agriculture:Eliminate the Market Access Program

Savings in Millions of Dollars
  • 2016
    186
  • 2017
    186
  • 2018
    187
  • 2019
    175
  • 2020
    175
  • 2021
    176
  • 2022
    176
  • 2023
    176
  • 2024
    176
  • 2025
    176
  • 2016-2020
    909
  • 2016-2025
    1789

Sources

Savings based on CBO projections of program cost, as found on page 4 of “CBO’s April 2014 Baseline for Farm Programs,’ April 14, 2014. The CBO’s estimates include the period 2013–2024. For 2025, Heritage analysts assumed the same level of savings of $176 million as estimated by the CBO for 2021–2024.

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Technical Notes on Scoring

CBO Baseline

Unless otherwise noted, calculations for savings for each recommendation relies on the most recent Congressional Budget Office baseline, as found in “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2014 to 2024,” published August 27, 2014, has been used.

Savings “Totals”

While totals for the five and 10 year savings are provided by section and for the complete set of recommendations, there are two reasons they should not be viewed as representing total savings for The Budget Book.

First, as noted in the introduction, The Heritage Foundation would recommend that the savings realized in the Function 050 Defense section would stay within the Department of Defense to strengthen the nation’s defense capabilities.

Second, the numbers cannot be deemed to represent the realized savings if every single recommendation were adopted because policy changes made in one program can impact spending levels in other programs.  Thus, the numbers in the table do not reflect any potential interactions between the various policy changes affecting spending or savings.

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Heritage Recommendation:

Eliminate the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Market Access Program (MAP). This proposal saves $186 million in 2016, and $1.8 billion over 10 years

Rationale:

Talk about waste & cronyism: Taxpayers paying international wine tastings & reality shows!

The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service runs several market development programs, including MAP, that are designed to help industry promote exports overseas.

MAP subsidizes trade associations, businesses, and other private entities to help them market and promote their products overseas. Under MAP, taxpayers have recently helped to fund international wine-tastings, organic hair products for cats and dogs, and a reality television show in India. It is not government’s role to advance the marketing interests of certain industries or businesses. Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the marketing that private businesses should do on their own.

Talk about waste & cronyism: Taxpayers paying international wine tastings & reality shows!

Contributing Expert

Daren Bakst studies and writes about agriculture subsidies, property rights, environmental policy, food labeling and related issues as The Heritage Foundation’s research fellow in agricultural policy.

See publications by Daren Bakst

Daren BakstResearch Fellow in Agricultural Policy

Heritage Expert

Diane Katz, who has analyzed and written on public policy issues for more than two decades, is a research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation.

See publications by Diane Katz

Diane KatzResearch Fellow in Regulatory Policy

Additional Reading