Every Presidential candidate makes promises throughout their campaign to sway voters to earn their spot as president. For many candidates, only a few of these promises come to fruition. Other promises haunt them throughout their presidency. These promises present challenges for the White House in a few unique scenarios long after the president who made them is gone. That is exactly what happened when Jimmy Carter promised to spur the economy for dairy farmers. This is a story of government employees traveling the country tasting cheese, warehouses full of cheese stacked to the ceiling, and the government’s hurried effort to get rid of its cheese through the Government Cheese program. This one sounds like a joke, but we promise it’s a true story.
What is Government Chese?
It is exactly what it sounds like, cheese from the government. During the 1980s and 90s, the United States government provided free blocks of cheese to its citizens as a form of welfare. Those who lived off this cheese had mixed opinions of it. Some people hated it, and others loved it. Some loved it so much that they look for it to this day. Popular restaurants like Wahlburgers, the burger restaurant owned by Mark Wahlberg and his brother, even have the special cheese on their menu.
Why did the Government give away cheese?
Well, this is where it gets interesting. The Government had a whole bunch of cheese. Here’s why while Jimmy Carter was running for president, he promised dairy farmers to raise the price of milk. Once elected president, he began working to fulfill that promise, and the best way to do that was to buy a lot of dairy products. So the government told dairy farmers to tell them how much dairy they would like to sell them and what price they would like to sell it for, then the government would purchase it. Needless to say, the farmers jumped on this deal, and America bought tons of cheese literally. Over the course of the program, the US purchase 560 million pounds of cheese.
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Storing millions of pounds of cheese
Dairy presented a problem for the government, and that was the issue of it being perishable. As much as possible, the government converted its dairy stockpile into more long-term products, most commonly cheese. Even cheese required cool conditions to keep. So the government rented millions of square feet of cold storage around the country for its massive cheese stockpile. Most often, these were caves, the largest of which was in Kansas City, Missouri. The United States Government really had cheese caves.
Ronald Reagan saves the world with cheese
When Ronald Reagan took office, the cheese stockpile was a serious problem. It was a major expense to store that amount of cheese in cold storage throughout the country. Also, this cheese was getting old, and much of it was going to waste. However, selling the cheese would wreck the dairy market in the US, and exporting it would also damage the market. So, Reagan created the government cheese program. The novel idea allowed states to request aid from the capital and receive 3 million pounds of cheese. Then, local governments distributed this cheese to their citizens on their own. This welfare program lasted for a couple of decades and gained notoriety. It’s been referenced in everything from Saturday Night Live to Snoop Dogg songs.
Conclusion
The Government Cheese Program was certainly one of the strangest things the United States government has ever done. They spent millions of tax dollars purchasing, storing, packaging, and distributing cheese to low-income families. The government acted as if they were helping the people, but in reality, they were getting rid of something that they bought way too much of. There is so much more to this story, like government employees who traveled the nation tasting cheese to determine which cheese was worth being purchased. Watch or listen to this episode of Things I Learned Last Night to find out more about Government Cheese.
Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning, and laughing a whole lot while you do, then you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode right now!
Sources
How the US Ended Up With Warehouses Full of ‘Government Cheese’ – History
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