(Washington, D.C.) – In testimony presented today before a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) hearing, John Frydenlund, Food and Agricultural Policy Fellow for the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) blasted a USDA proposal for a 12.5 percent increase in the basic formula price (BFP) of milk. 

The USDA plan would raise the BFP to $13.50, nearly $1.50 higher than the 1997 average.  Frydenlund said the increase would “add close to 13 cents to every gallon of milk, costing U.S. consumers $700 million annually.”  He also said the higher BFP would cost taxpayers nearly $100 million more due to increased costs to the school lunch program, WIC and other government purchase programs such as for the military.

In addition to Frydenlund’s testimony, CCAGW President Tom Schatz fired off a letter to members of Congress asking them to oppose the USDA’s “extraordinary intervention” in the dairy industry.

“I must register our strenuous objection to this proposal,” Schatz stated in the letter.  “Although those proposing this action argue that dairy producers need such emergency relief, this proposal is unnecessary, unjustified, and unfair to consumers and taxpayers.

“This excessive increase in the BFP will make the dairy lobby deliriously happy. But it will pick the pockets of consumers and taxpayers.  Such intervention will stimulate tremendous milk production increases, drive down consumption due to higher prices and increase government purchases and costs.”

“We must remember that excessively high dairy price supports in the 1970’s cost the government billions of dollars, resulted in caves full of government-owned butter and cheese, and ultimately led to the disastrous Milk Diversion and Dairy Termination programs of the 1980’s.  If Congress wants to go back to force-feeding cheese to senior citizens, slaughtering dairy cows and destroying the beef market, there is no better way to accomplish that than to raise the BFP.”

CCAGW is a 600,000-member lobbying organization dedicated to enacting legislation to eliminate waste, inefficiency, mismanagement and abuse in the federal government.