Before the Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, Virginia Sixth District Congressman Bob Goodlatte served as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

Campaigning for re-election at the 40th annual Labor Fest in Buena Vista on Monday, Goodlatte told the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner that the government should “absolutely” phase out agricultural subsidies.

“If you look at the agriculture here in the Sixth District, it’s primarily livestock based,” he explained. These Virginia farmers “do not get government subsidies.”

Subsidies gone ‘awry’
Goodlatte offered the example of the ethanol program as a “well-intentioned” government policy “going awry and causing a lot of dollars to be wasted” as it props up “one segment of the economy at the expense of people who eat” – a universal class of Americans – and “farmers who buy corn and soybeans to feed to their livestock.”

Ending subsidies is a first step, Goodlatte said, because “we also need to go beyond that.”

The last farm bill, he pointed out, was “a small step” and “we could go a lot further in phasing out the commodity programs” and then pushing farmers “in the direction of not being dependent on direct subsidies [and] countercyclical payments” but instead assist them in “buying crop insurance and futures trading to hedge against bad markets.”

Goodlatte identified export growth as “very important” to people in Virginia.

The Sixth District, he said, “is the largest exporting congressional district in Virginia” with its production of agricultural and forestry products, the growth of technology companies, and what he called “the largest paper mill of its kind in the world in Covington,” which exports “very high grade bleached board.”

Free trade and export markets
In addition, Goodlatte noted, “we haul coal out of the coal fields through Roanoke and export that around the world.”

“It is very important that we continue to open up markets overseas,” he said, “but ‘free trade’ also means ‘fair trade’ and we’ve got to make sure that when we have trade agreements, we enforce our side of those agreements against those in other countries who try to block our products or who unfairly try to dump their products in the United States.”

With regard to the pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea, Goodlatte explained, “I am for those agreements because I think that in each one of those instances, we already have very open markets for their products coming” to the United States. “To me it’s a no-brainer to have them agree to open their markets up so we can export our products into those countries. I think it will create hundreds of thousands of American jobs if those agreements were passed.”

Earning the libertarian vote
Asked how he plans to earn the votes of self-identified libertarians in November, Goodlatte replied:

“I have worked very hard in the past to secure the votes of people who believe in limited government, in liberty, in free enterprise, and I think my voting record in the Congress reflects that.”

If the GOP gains control of Congress, Goodlatte said there will be an opportunity “to repeal this outrageous health care bill and replace it with common-sense reforms that the people want, that don’t cost a lot of money, that don’t create enormous new bureaucracy,”

He also said he supports “a balanced budget amendment to the United States Constitution, which I’ve been pushing for for many years and [for] which support is clearly growing,” and for “tax reform and private property rights.”

Goodlatte said, “These are some of the key issues. A Congress with a Republican, conservative majority would have the effect of bringing those issues to the fore and, I think, libertarians would appreciate many” of them.

Goodlatte’s bill to add a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution was introduced on January 6, 2009, and has been designated House Joint Resolution 1. It has 179 cosponsors.

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