Happy Halloween: Taxpayers Get Tricked With Wasteful Spending

Halloween is here. That means a fun day of candy, costumes, jack-o-lanterns and cute trick-or-treaters filling neighborhood sidewalks across America. Also for  taxpayers, Halloween is also an excuse for government to waste a terrifying amount of tax dollars on some pretty ridiculous projects.

Carving a Chunk Out of Taxpayers’ Wallets

Agricultural subsidies for products like peanuts, dairy and sugar are fairly well known. Most taxpayers aren’t aware that the federal government also carved out subsidies for jack-o-lanterns. In fact, federal taxpayers spent more than $1.74 million to underwrite pumpkin growers and subsidize the cost of federal pumpkin crop insurance programs between 1995 and 2011.

That cost has been swelling recently. From 2008-2010, the average cost of subsidizing pumpkins was $134,589 annually, according to estimates from the Environmental Working Group’s Farm Subsidy Database. Last year, that expense spiked to $540,000 as a result of heavy rains and flooding from Hurricane Irene that destroyed hundreds of thousands of pumpkins in the Northeast.

An “a-MAZE-ing” Waste of Money

Many of taxpayers would be horrified to learn that the Tennessee Department of Agriculture blows tax dollars subsidizing corn mazes, pumpkin patches, hayrides and other businesses that make money hand over first this time of year without government handouts. Yet, that’s exactly what is happening, thanks to an ghastly $1.2 million grant scheme intended to boost agritourism, and encourage diversification and innovation in farming.

As a result of the government grants, taxpayers buy bees, Christmas trees, websites, blackberry plants, grape vines, materials to make goat milk soap and other supplies for farmers who, oftentimes, make much more money than the folks buying the items.

The grants disproportionately provide treats to farm and farmers who rake in the money during the Halloween season.

Old McDonald’s Farm in Sale Creek, for example, pocketed $10,536 of taxpayers’ money to pay for a hay ride wagon and signage promoting the farm’s corn maze.

On top of selling thousands of pumpkins, Guthrie Pumpkin Farm and Corn Maze in Riceville features a haunted corn maze, redneck zombie paintball and a hay ride. Despite long lines of East Tennesseans paying to patronize the business, the state gave Gathrie’s owners $15,000 in agribusiness welfare.

Chunkin’ Cash in Colorado

The Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, celebrates fall by shooting pumpkins hundreds of feet through the air at the expense of taxpayers.

The event, called “Punkin’ Chunkin’ Colorado,” features seven classes of various pumpkin-shooting air guns, catapults and slingshots. There are prizes for longest shot in each category and the most theatrical team of pumpkin shooters, as well as a grand prize for the gourd gun that shoots pumpkins the farthest.

Much of the town’s $315,569 “special events” budget is blown on staging and promoting the event each October. The Visit Aurora Promotion Board, the local tourism agency, also uses a chunk of its $550,000 taxpayer-funded budget to underwrite the expense of smashing pumpkins over great distances.

October 31^st is scary enough without local, state and federal lawmakers shaking down taxpayers to fund their favorite Halloween-themed pork projects. These government ghouls should make it a point to put an end to the frightening practice of tricking taxpayers into paying for other people’s Halloween treats.