Question for Christmas tree farmers

I first heard today that yesterday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture enacted a 15 cent surcharge on all real Christmas trees across the board nationally, to be used to fund a "Christmas Tree Promotion Board", that will promote a new invention, the Christmas tree, during Christmas. But then later today, I heard a member of Congress speak about this, and he said that Congress was lobbied by Christmas tree growers to add this surcharge to all natural Christmas trees, to be given back to some organization that will then use the money to market this new idea of Christmas trees. I am not joking, do a search of "15 cent Christmas tree surcharge" it on the internet. It is for real.

My question to the Christmas tree farmers, do any of you know about this? Is it to be used to promote Christmas trees in your local market areas? How will this benefit you? Would it not have been easier and cheaper for the Christmas tree farmers to just add 15 cents onto the price of a Christmas tree to use for advertising, as opposed to creating some new bureau that will then need to be funded, probably using most of the surcharge anyway, never making it to the Christmas tree farmers?

Thanks.

Mark

I'm thinking it's just like the checkoff promotions for beef,pork,milk,corn,soybeans,peanuts.........

You are correct. All the christmas tree growers here support it hoping to sell more trees.

Just what we don t need more goverment bureaucracy adding .15 cents on to any product .
Next thing you know it won t be enough @.15 cents per tree it will be just like our taxes which they say is never enough.
What the tree farmers should do is just like was said charge the .15 cents and form a Co-Op to advertise ,Promote there own product. Also us the resources to replant there products. Surely there is enough Farmers that has better sense than a politician to manage ther monies.

In that case your President strikes again, the check off has been canceled by external_link.

I think he started it and it wasn't going over very good. So he canceled it.

I think milk and meat check off programs are BULL. they skim money from alot of low wage earning folks and pay high wage celebrities big dollars. Why are dairy farmers, who have historically been underpaid, paying for Cal Ripken, who is a multi millionaire. Its crap. And, I bet sales didn't change much. Plus, the people employed full time by these groups are probably making a very nice salary, pretending to be doing something important. Its called socialism. And the wealth re-distribution is going up, not down.

On the news this evening, nothing to do with government, it is a program where for each tree sold 15 cents will be given by growers to a council to promote real Christmas trees.

Mark,
I agree with the others. Any time there is a tax, surcharge, whatever, that is collected from consumers to be redistributed as the entity (usually the govt) collecting it see fit, it's a waste.

If the Christmas tree growers want to take a portion of their income and contribute to a co-op or whatever to promote their product, fine go ahead. But the buyer of a tree at Christmas time who paid $20 last year is not going to pay $20.15 this year. The retailer will either a) absorb the 15 cents the grower added or b) raise the price to $21 and blame the growers for the increase.

I would've expected Christmas tree growers to be mostly self-reliant, self-made, "less government" conservatives. With all the greenie liberals harassing them about cutting down trees, and such...

To think that they would get together and BEG the government to take their money and create several high-paying, do-nothing board member jobs, is infuriating.

The hog check-off was always voluntary. Was the milk check-off manadatory?