Today's Washington Post reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has continued to make subsidy payments to farmers who are deceased.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture distributed $1.1 billion over seven years to the estates or companies of deceased farmers and routinely failed to conduct reviews required to ensure that the payments were properly made, according to a government report.
In a selection of 181 cases from 1999 to 2005, the Government Accountability Office found that officials approved payments without any review 40 percent of the time. . . .
In a letter responding to the GAO report, the Agriculture Department said that the payments were not necessarily examples of fraud or abuse and that auditors did not prove any specific cases of cheating. The department's field offices defended the practice of routinely paying dead farmers' estates without fully investigating the claims, citing staff shortages and competing priorities. The agency also said that any overpayments would amount to less than 1 percent of farm subsidies paid between 1999 and 2005.
Related Posts (on one page):
- The Case for Paying Dead Farmers Not to Farm Instead of Living Ones:
- Paying Dead Farmers Not to Farm:
Yes, the theory is nice, that small farmers sometimes need help through hard times. But why should small farmers need it any more than small software vendors, small electronics firms, or, in my case, small law firms? The reality is that much of farming is now big business, and these farm subsidy programs essentially are there to salve our nostalgia about our rural past. Why should the small farmers who are supposed to be the recipients of these programs supported in the first place? All it does is delay the economic rationalization of the farming industry, to the detriment of the taxpayers and consumers (who are most often one in the same, but getting hit twice).
Of course, much of this is a result of our federalist system. The Senate has two Senators from each state, regardless of population. And, thus, the agricultural states, with their much lower population densities, get undue representation in this body, resulting in this sort of pork.
The only good thing about our system is in comparison with other countries. Japan and the EC (esp. France) are notorious for their farm subsidies and restrictive agricultural tariffs, all to protect agribusinesses more obsolete than ours.
Seems they had overpaid me on my exit (leave I didn't take and stuff). Please send the total PLUS INTEREST in the return envelope within 2 weeks.
Assuming for the moment that there is some rational reason to pay farmers not to farm, shouldn't we only be paying the ones who are actually capable of farming?
If the benefits are supposed to run with the land then they should be going to whoever became the owner after the original participant's death. If a farmer in such a program dies and you buy the farm from his estate (or inherit it directly), any benefits that run with the land should go to you and not to the dead farmer or his heirs.
P.S. This thread has been treating the topic *much* too seriously.
Oh, goodie. Farm benefits for Blackacre. O is boviously dead, but what estate did he grant A? ;-)
boviouslyobviously