USDA Paid Dead Farmers $1.1B
The Agriculture Department sent $1.1 billion in farm payments to more than 170,000 dead people over a seven-year period, congressional investigators say.
The findings by the Government Accountability Office were released Monday as the House prepared to debate and pass farm legislation this week that would govern subsidies and the department's programs for the next five years.
GAO auditors reviewed payments from 1999 through 2005 in the report, which was requested by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.
"It's unconscionable that the Department of Agriculture would think that a dead person was actively engaged in the business of farming," said Grassley.
The auditors said they found that the department has not been conducting the necessary checks to ensure that subsidy payments are proper.
"USDA has made farm payments to estates more than two years after recipients died, without determining, as its regulations require, whether the estates were kept open to receive these payments," their report said.
Of the identified payments to deceased farmers' estates or businesses, 40 percent went to those who had been dead more than three years, and 19 percent went to those who had been dead for seven or more years.
John Johnson, a deputy administrator for the Farm Service Agency, said there is no indication that the payments were improper, since some rules allow estates to continue receiving money after a two-year grace period. The department is hoping to rely less on self-reporting and is working with the Social Security Administration to boost its record keeping, he said.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said the report bolsters the argument there should be lower ceilings and stricter limits on farm subsidies.
"Given extremely tight budget restraints, it is no longer tolerable to permit billions of dollars in farm bill payments to go to individuals who in instances don't even farm or are no longer alive," he said.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said he is looking into ways to stop estates from continuing to collect farm payments long after the designated recipient for them has died.
"They have plenty of people to check to make sure they aren't handing out payments to dead people, for God's sake," he said.
The GAO findings were first reported Monday by The Washington Post.
© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The findings by the Government Accountability Office were released Monday as the House prepared to debate and pass farm legislation this week that would govern subsidies and the department's programs for the next five years.
GAO auditors reviewed payments from 1999 through 2005 in the report, which was requested by Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.
"It's unconscionable that the Department of Agriculture would think that a dead person was actively engaged in the business of farming," said Grassley.
The auditors said they found that the department has not been conducting the necessary checks to ensure that subsidy payments are proper.
"USDA has made farm payments to estates more than two years after recipients died, without determining, as its regulations require, whether the estates were kept open to receive these payments," their report said.
Of the identified payments to deceased farmers' estates or businesses, 40 percent went to those who had been dead more than three years, and 19 percent went to those who had been dead for seven or more years.
John Johnson, a deputy administrator for the Farm Service Agency, said there is no indication that the payments were improper, since some rules allow estates to continue receiving money after a two-year grace period. The department is hoping to rely less on self-reporting and is working with the Social Security Administration to boost its record keeping, he said.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said the report bolsters the argument there should be lower ceilings and stricter limits on farm subsidies.
"Given extremely tight budget restraints, it is no longer tolerable to permit billions of dollars in farm bill payments to go to individuals who in instances don't even farm or are no longer alive," he said.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said he is looking into ways to stop estates from continuing to collect farm payments long after the designated recipient for them has died.
"They have plenty of people to check to make sure they aren't handing out payments to dead people, for God's sake," he said.
The GAO findings were first reported Monday by The Washington Post.
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Why dont we use some of these subsidies to subsidize Corn production and ethanol production and produce bio fuel and lower its prices to the consumer instead so we create a true infrastructure of alternative fuel production without the big corporations purposely charging us more for it when theres no excuse except more gorging of profits from us beat up consumers.
I am no great fan of farm subsidies but I also understand that farm prices must go up if the farmers do not get some kind of help. I look at current market prices for grain and they are very similar to when I was in the grain industry back in the early 1970s. Yet a farmer's expense has multiplied immensely. Fuel prices have gone up 10-fold, equipment prices about the same amount, labor proces have gone up about 5X, and agricultural chemicals have become legally dificult and expensive to use. Yet we still pay the farmer less than 20% more per bushel.
But frankly, this is not as big of a deal as it sounds. It is not as if Social Security were paying retirement benefits to dead people. Once a person dies, the obligation of SS either is generally either eliminated or reduced. But USDA payments are under a contract and would be due to the estate or the heirs of the property. Often rural folks do not go through all the legal hoops when a person dies. My experience as a CPA is that the SS benefits are always ended, but the surviving spouse usually takes over the farm operation and the UDSA payments continue to be made, rightfully directly to the surviving spouse, but sometimes the paperwork is not submitted and the checks still go to the deceased farmer. I do not think the government is out much money at the end of the day from the situation described.
Amen! How about some common sense governing and stop with the partisan politics?
Most people don't realize that the subsidies to relatively well off farmers in the U.S., Europe, & Japan are seen by the developing world as the greatest impediment to eliminating global poverty and the mother of all free trade violations which the World trade organization turns a blind eye to.
These subsidies need to be phased out.