Yesterday, GOP congressional candidate Vicky Hartzler, who is angling to replace Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), appeared on conservative Mark Levin’s radio show. Levin probed Hartzler’s view on a variety of issues, including why she, the owner of a small farm business with her husband, wanted to run against Skelton.
Hartzler explained that she’s a “lifelong farmer and a small town girl” and that she decided to run for Congress to get the government off her back. “We just want the government to leave us alone here in Missouri’s 4th,” she told Levin:
LEVIN: Now, tell us a little bit about yourself.
HARTZLER: Sure, I’m just one of the people of the 4th district, lifelong farmer and a small town girl, went to school here my whole life. My husband and I are small business owners. We sell farm equipment, we have three stores. I was a teacher for several years, was a state rep for six years, a wife and a mom. We just want the government to leave us alone here in Missouri’s 4th.
The problem with Hartzler’s self-righteous invocation for the government to “leave us alone,” is that it has done anything but that with her farm business. According to data collected by the Environmental Working Group, Hartzler and her husband’s farm outside Harrisonville, Missouri, has “received $774,325 in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2009.”
On Hartzler’s campaign website, these subsidies aren’t listed anywhere. On the page dealing with agriculture, the candidate explains that “agriculture is a large part of my life, and that it is vital that our farmers and ranchers have a level playing field as they market their products world wide. They should be able to pass on the farming legacy without the devastating death tax and be able to operate without onerous government regulations.” Yet it appears that Hartzler is completely fine with taking hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to operate the aforementioned farms.
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