Showing posts with label rural broadband. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rural broadband. Show all posts

Thursday, June 19, 2025

FarmFirst+: Robert Beers’s 10‑Year Plan to Secure Farmers & Balance the Budget

 

FarmFirst+: Protecting Farmers, Soil & Your Wallet

1. Guaranteed Income & Safety Nets

  • Expanded ARC/PLC & DMC: Reference prices cover 120% of real costs, indexed annually—locking in predictable revenue while avoiding budget overruns.

  • Drone-triggered ECAP: Automates payouts using real-time USDA data—eliminating delays, lowering overhead, and reducing annual cost uncertainty.

  • Targeted Premium Subsidies: Cover crop‐insurance costs for farms under 500 acres—reducing new bankruptcies and lowering social-service dependency.

2. Farmland Defense & Affordability

  • National Food Security Zones (NFSZ): Congress expands Agricultural‑Protection Zoning, preventing non-farm development on prime cropland usda.govfarmlandinfo.org.

  • Heritage Farm Credits: 25% income-tax credit on inherited farmland over 20 years keeps generational farms intact—preventing land loss and future debt.

3. Water & Drought Resilience

  • Sensor-Powered Subsidies: Fund moisture-sensor installations, reducing irrigation use by ~30%—save water and reduce federal disaster payouts.

  • Aquifer Recharge Payback: Farmers earn $100/acre-foot for managed water infiltration—stabilizing reserves and reducing long-term costs.

4. Soil Health Dividend as Debt Asset

  • Soil Carbon Credits ($35+/ton): Expand NRCS EQIP funding for heavy soil testing and pay $35/ton via verified carbon market structures—promotes adoption, earns farmers, secures public goods reddit.com.

  • Cover Crop Tech Grants: Boost adoption from ~7% to 40% by providing tools, genetics, and agronomy support apnews.com.

5. Smart Finance & Debt Relief

  • Distressed Owner Loans (0% interest): Forgivable loans for those in drought-declared counties—reducing default risk and future welfare reliance.

  • Farm Savings Accounts: Tax-deferred savings up to $50K/year—helping farmers self-insure against unexpected costs.

6. Local Market Empowerment

  • Processing Grants: Enable on-farm food processing—keeping 25–40% more revenue in local economies.

  • Export Streamlining: “Ag Export Express” reduces red tape—boosting farmer income and increasing federal tariff compliance revenues.

7. Policy & Tech Backbone

  • Food Security & Farm Protection Act: Blocks out-of-state mandates; empowers local production and avoids costly rule conflicts.

  • Double USDA R&D Budget: Invest $5B/year in drought crops, desalination, ag-tech, and cybersecurity—drives both resilience and private sector deployment.


💰 Financial & Fiscal Impact (10-Year Outlook)

AreaCost/Savings
Soil Carbon Payments, EQIP$3–5 B/year
Safety Net Premium Subsidies$2 B/year
NFSZ EstablishmentLoss of sprawl‑related tax revenue offset by agland value retention
Water Sensor Program$500 M upfront; saves billions in disaster relief
Total Annual Budget Impact+$10 B investments offset by multi-billion cuts in subsidies, disaster, and welfare
  • Deficit Protection: Fully funded through reallocating outdated commodity subsidies (like F‑35 and corporate tax breaks)—no debt increase.

  • Debt Alignment: Soil carbon revenues could be securitized, providing a perpetual public asset stream supporting infrastructure or debt repayment.


✅ Campaign Alignment

  • Consistent with debt-cutting goals: Funds come from subsidy realignment, not taxes.

  • Promotes “America First”: Keeps food production, water, carbon, and farmland in U.S. hands.

  • Boosts resilience: Farmers gain tools to thrive—even amid crises.

  • Builds rural economies: Grants and exports pay dividends to communities.

America First Budget Reform: Robert Beers’s Plan to Cut Waste & Fund You

 

Robert Beers’s “America First” Cost-Cutting & Reinvestment Plan

📉 Immediate Cuts (Save $1.1 Trillion / 10-Year):

  • End Corporate Welfare ($181B/yr): Eliminate fossil fuel, Big Ag, and tech subsidies—$85 B/yr alone from outdated programs like farm bailouts and fossil incentives sfchronicle.com.

  • Reduce Bureaucracy ($30B): Consolidate 148 overlapping job‑training and nutrition programs into streamlined services gao.gov.

  • Cut Pentagon Waste ($110B): Cancel F‑35 overruns, close unneeded bases, recover unused airline tickets, and enforce clean audits en.wikipedia.org.

  • Slash Wasteful Grants & Consulting ($33B): End luxury‑project loans and cap consulting contracts from McKinsey/Deloitte washingtonpost.com+7americansforprosperity.org+7sfchronicle.com+7.

🌍 Smart Foreign Aid Reform ($250B/10-Year):

  • Redirect aid from regimes violating human rights, consolidate overlapping programs, and audit for corruption—preserve aid to Ukraine, Taiwan, global vaccines.

💰 Reinvest in Americans ($1.8 Trillion Redirected):

  • Expand Medicare dental/vision, fund 1,000 rural health clinics, deploy broadband to 20M homes, and provide childcare credits—saving every household ~$4,200/yr.

🏛 America‑First Safeguards:

  • Require “Buy American” on federal projects.

  • Reinstate Glass‑Steagall to prevent bank bailouts.

  • Apply pandemic PPP only to small, citizen-owned businesses.


🔍 Why This Plan Works

  • Fully balances the budget immediately, eliminating the $1.7 T deficit and cutting $18 T off the national debt by 2040.

  • No tax hikes; builds prosperity through targeted cuts and smarter spending.

  • Shifts power from bureaucratic elites to hardworking South Carolinians while preserving vital aid.


✔️ Added Savings from Outdated Programs


✅ Campaign Bill Summary

Title: America First Budget Reform Act
Purpose: Aggressively cut waste, redirect savings to health, education, and infrastructure, and preserve deficit reduction without raising taxes.

Key Provisions:

  1. Repeal corporate welfare and energy subsidies.

  2. Mandate audits and consolidation of duplicative programs.

  3. Cancel weapon and console waste, enforce Pentagon audit.

  4. Reinvest into Medicare, broadband, childcare, and rural health.

  5. Enforce American-made, restore bank separation, and safeguard aid.


📢 Campaign Message

“Robert Beers will end Washington waste—no more giveaways to the well‑connected. We’ll close loopholes, cut outdated programs, and put every dollar back into American families—secure healthcare, rural broadband, quality childcare. It’s time South Carolina leads our country back to fiscal sanity and real prosperity.”