Want to know where the money confiscated from your paycheck is going?  One example is the Department of Agriculture.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a fiscal year 2009 budget of $95 billion.  Of that, $15 billion is for "rural development":  rural utilities, rural housing, and something called "Rural Business Cooperative Service".  Seriously?  First of all, is "rural development" a legitimate government function?  Perusing the Constitution, I find no justification for such an expense.  But let's assume that "rural utilities" were a legitimate government expense, do we really need investment in utilities in 2009?  Are there really that many people who live in rural areas without homes or electricity?

Another 2% of the USDA budget goes to something called "International" (getting drill downs on budget specifics is not straightforward on the agency's website).  I can't imagine any good reason for $2 billion of taxpayer money to go overseas for agricultural subsidies or programs.

The vast majority (63%) of the department's budget goes to "nutritional assistance" — WIC, food stamps, and "child nutrition".  Such entitlement & welfare programs are a debate of their own, but at least with this spending, somebody is ostensibly getting fed — there's a measurable output there.  However, a closer look at the numbers is telling.  According to Census Bureau data for 2007 (the latest available on their website), there were 37.3 million people living in the official poverty designation.  With the troubled economy, let's assume that amount has increased to 40 million.  The sum of government "nutrition programs" is $61.8 billion ($6.3 billion for WIC, $40.2 billion for food stamps, and $15.3 billion for "child nutrition").  That means that every person living in poverty could be issued a check for $1545 for food each year.  That's per person, not per family.  Thus, we're spending enough on food assistance to send a family of four living in poverty a check for $6180 for food in 2009 — that's a lot of groceries.

But let's assume that we want to help not just those below the poverty line, but some people hovering around it or slightly above.  Extending food assistance to an additional 20 million people would decrease the payment per person to only $1030 — still over $4 grand for a family of four, and this would mean that 60 million people would be getting assistance buying food.  That's 20% of the country.  Something tells me 20% of the country isn't getting $1000 a year from the government for food, so that tells me we could be much more efficient with our "nutrition spending".

But it gets worse:  other government programs actually work to increase food prices (thus requiring, of course, higher payments to the poor to help them buy food).  For example, sugar import quotas and tariffs increase the price of sugar.  Domestic sugar producers pay big money in lobbying the government each year to keep out foreign competition and keep sugar prices high.  There's another cost to such a program as well:  because sugar doesn't grow as plentifully in the US as it does in, say, Brazil, sugar cane farmers here have to use more chemicals; these chemicals pollute the environment.  So the government is raising the price of sugar and promoting pollution (which, of course, they will then have to tax us to pay to clean up).  The government also works to increase the price of milk, and government policies raise the price of food imported from other countries (for example:  the recent closing of Mexican truck access to American roads; this raises shipping costs, thus increasing the price of food imported from Mexico).  Ethanol subsidies result in an increase in the price of corn.

With the federal budget deficit predicted to approach $2 trillion, cutting on a $100 billion cabinet agency may seem like wasted time.  However, cutting a department that has so much obvious waste and inefficiency, enacts policies that hurt American consumers, and has at best questionable Constitutional mandate seems like a great place to start.