John Block Reports from Washington

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the
National Corn Growers Association, CropLife America, and Renewable Fuels Association.
They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural
America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary –

President Biden surrenders to the Taliban. The war in Afghanistan is officially over. After 20
years of conflict and more than 2400 American lives lost and 20,000 of our service members
wounded, and now the Taliban rules Afghanistan. I wanted us to get out. But not like we did.

On the home front our Senate has passed a budget with an explosive increase in new spending. The $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill should be enough, but it is not enough for the big spending liberals. They want to spend another $3.5 trillion. The money will expand childcare, Medicare, free community college. All kinds of humanitarian aid. Where will we get the money? We could find some money. Many of our biggest corporations pay no taxes. Thousands of the richest individuals in our country pay almost no taxes. $5 trillion of new spending is hard to justify. Although the Senate passed the bill, the House has not, and they should not without dramatically cutting the cost. And don’t take the money away from small businesses and farms.

We all know that COVID-19 has taken a lot of lives. But did we know that violence and crime in
our nation’s capital and many of our largest cities is resulting in more homicides than the
pandemic. Murders in 29 big cities have spiked 16% this year. “Philadelphia had 22 Covid-19
deaths and 34 homicides last month. Cook County (Chicago) had 74 COVID-19 deaths in July
and 105 homicides.” Our nation and big cities need to prioritize this. Some states have ignored
the problem. In California you can walk into a store and walk out with $900 worth of
merchandise. No worry. You can get away with it.

Here is some positive information. Ag exports this year are expected to set a new record of $173.5 billion with ag imports at $157.5 billion. That’s a lot better than the ag trade deficit that we ran in 2019 and 2020.

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