Stimulus: USDA To Spend $14.7 Million Bailing Out Grocery Stores
Here in North Dakota the USDA’s Department of Rural Development has stepped in to prop up a failing rural grocery store in Buffalo. Now, as other rural grocery stores in the state are considered for bailouts, it’s looking like this has become national policy for the USDA that will cost taxpayers millions.
(CNSNews.com) — Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced Wednesday that USDA is handing out $14.7 million in taxpayer money to community groups in rural areas to lend or give to rural businesses — including to rural grocery stores.
The USDA chief Wednesday announced 69 new spending projects under the Rural Business Enterprise Grants/Rural Economic Area Partnerships program (RBEG) and the Intermediate Re-lending Program (IRP).
It seems to me that if a grocery store has so few customers that it can’t stay open, then it shouldn’t stay open. If people in these smaller communities want their stores to stay open, then perhaps they should shop there instead of asking people who don’t live near the store and never shop at the store to pay for its existence.
Are we to have grocery stores that exist not to serve real demand in the public but rather just to soak up federal tax dollars?
The truth is, the only reason these stores are going out of business is because people are choosing to move away from these communities. Or, at least, do their shopping away from the communities. People are voting with their feet, in other words, and the federal government has no business (nor can it afford) trying to make things otherwise.
Tags: Stimulus, subsidies, USDA
