Latest Answers http://askyourlawmaker.org/answers/latest/%2A/%2A/68/%2A a view of answers sorted by date en It’s obvious that the war in Iraq has made things more difficult because of turmoil in the Middle East, and just the amount of oil the war is using. There’s a number of things that have caused the price of oil to go up. We believe, and that’s part of our package, we need to do something to rein in the speculation, we believe there’s a lot of speculation. Some economists say the percentage is pretty high, just the speculative part of this. http://askyourlawmaker.org/answers/it%E2%80%99s-obvious-war-iraq-has-made-things-more-difficult-because-turmoil-middle-east%2C-and-just-a http://askyourlawmaker.org/answers/it%E2%80%99s-obvious-war-iraq-has-made-things-more-difficult-because-turmoil-middle-east%2C-and-just-a#comments Tue, 13 May 2008 20:46:00 -0500 Todd Zwillich 1293 at http://askyourlawmaker.org Right now in the United States we pay about twice what the world going rate is on sugar, and that causes cookies and candies and all kind of other products to be more expensive at the supermarket, because of the sugar policy in America. And there are a fairly small number of very wealthy falimies in Florida that take advantage of this to the detriment of the rest of the country. So in my view we ought to let the market determine what the price of sugar ought to be and we shouldn’t have any sort of subsidy or any sort of tariffs on sugar. We ought to let the market determine the price of sugar.” <br><br> <b><i>Reporter Matt Laslo:</b> “Are these just arcane laws, why are they still in place?”</i><br><br> <b>Chabot:</b> “We have a lot of subsidies unfortunately on all kinds of products from peanuts and cotton to sugar and others as well. And each one of them sorta scratches the back of the other, and even though on an individual basis they would say the others aren’t very good, they think theirs is good and they all work together to keep all these subsidies on all these crops, so we pay higher prices at the super market because we have subsidies and we have tariffs on so many different products in this country. We ought to do away with them all and let the markets determine. http://askyourlawmaker.org/answers/right-now-united-states-we-pay-about-twice-what-world-going-rate-sugar%2C-and-causes-cookies-a Thu, 17 Apr 2008 10:07:49 -0500 Matt Laslo 1223 at http://askyourlawmaker.org Of course. There ought to be truth in budgeting. I don’t think that this is a real complicated concept. It seems to me that war expenditures just as expenditures for human services and other essential functions of government have got to be transparent. <br><br> <b>Elizabeth Wynne Johnson:</b> Anything that you plan to do to see that happen? <br><br> Certainly in the Budget Committee, you know with the Budget Resolution, Chairman Conrad is going to make a big push to try to force additional disclosure of those costs. http://askyourlawmaker.org/answers/course.-there-ought-be-truth-budgeting.-i-don%E2%80%99t-think-real-complicated-concept.-it-seems-me- Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:35:29 -0600 1138 at http://askyourlawmaker.org