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Farm subsidies for the dead?
By: Matthew Piccolo
7.23.2007
The Washington Post reports that the estates or companies of deceased farmers received $1.1 billion in subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the past seven years. This discovery exposes yet another problem with a federal Depression-era program that has long outworn its welcome. A Government Accountability Office investigation that reviewed 181 cases from 1999 to 2005 found that the USDA failed to check the current status of subsidies recipients 40 percent of the time. As a result, an Alabama estate collected $567,000 in payments over seven years for an owner who passed away in 1981. And a 1,900-acre Illinois soybean and corn farm received $400,000 from the government on behalf of a Florida owner who died in 1995. The U.S. farm subsidies program has long doled out benefits to unsuspecting and unneedy farmers. A 2006 Post investigation revealed that the USDA issued more than $15 billion in wasteful or redundant farm payments, including $1.3 billion to non-farmers and $817 million to farmers through subsidy limit loopholes. The farm program often helps those who can already help themselves. The Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl finds that most farm subsidies go to commercial farms with average household incomes of $200,000 and average net worth close to $2 million. The program has grossly outgrown its original purpose. Under President Roosevelt, Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace said that farm subsidies were "a temporary solution to deal with an emergency." They were to help farmers afflicted by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. The U.S. Congress should remember this fact today while debating the reauthorization of a farm bill that distributes $25 billion to farmers annually. Farm subsidies discourage self-reliance, innovation, and hard work, promote overproduction, and cost taxpayers billions yearly. But even if the program remains, the least Congress can do is eliminate waste and abuse, beginning by requiring verification that subsidy recipients are still living.
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