"Bought the Farm"

"Bought the farm," a common phrase used with a death, apparently has taken on a new meaning at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). In a recent review of 181 farm-subsidy cases, auditors at the Government Accountability Office ( GAO) found that agricultural officials routinely failed to conduct basic reviews to determine if the farmer receiving payments is still alive or if the farmer's estate is still eligible for the money.

An estate can collect federal subsidies for as long as two years after an owner's death. Beyond that, it must certify that the farm is still in operation and does not merely exist on paper to collect government checks.

Farm subsidies -- like a large number of other federal programs -- deserve to die. They were instituted in the 1930s to help ease the effects of the Depression on family farms. Over the years, they've become an insidious form of corporate welfare.

Commercial farmers (Corporations) with an average annual income of $200,000 receive the majority of farm subsidies. Huge businesses, not small farmers, are the main beneficiaries of this federal ?handout?.

Congress should ?bury? farm subsidies and put the ?Billion?s of $$$?s? allocated for them to better use. Congress persons are more interested in collecting votes from farm-state incumbents than in trimming billions of wasteful spending from the farm subsidy program. Leaders in the US Congress support the farm subsidy program - advanced by the Agriculture Committee - whose members' districts received more than 40 percent of all farm subsidies from 2003 to 2005 - because they fear freshmen congress persons in rural districts could have a hard time winning re-election if subsidies are cut.

Despite the many stories in the media over the past several months (the source of the information used in this letter), that laid bare the waste and abuse of this multi-billion dollar subsidy program, it appears poised to survive largely intact in the 2007 Farm Bill.

Of the $21 billion in farm payments last year, 92 percent went to five crops - corn, soybeans, cotton, rice and wheat. Some wealthy farmers (corporations) made millions from selling their crops, and millions more in subsidy payments.

Abuses reported include $1.3 billion in subsidies to people who aren't farmers, including $490,000 in checks to a Houston heart surgeon for land that hadn't been farmed in at least a decade. Recipients of huge checks also included land owners such as ?news personalities?; ?billionaire personalities?, and sitting ?congressional personalities?, none of which are directly engaged in agriculture. John Hancock Life Insurance, for example, collected more than $2.8 million during the period of 1999 to 2005.

Abuses - outright fraud and scandals. "Improper farm payments" amount to as much as $500 million each year. $1.3 billion has been paid to unscrupulous people who have never farmed. Disaster payments were made to farmers who didn't have a disaster.

The GAO found egregious breakdowns in verifying claims.

A corporate farm in Illinois certified every year that a major shareholder was "actively engaged" in the farm - even though the man had died in Florida several years earlier.

In another case, a farmer died in 1973. His estate continued to receive payments over the next three decades. No record indicates that the USDA ever tried to verify that the farm was still running.

A report on farm subsidy programs found that the USDA paid $1.1 billion to 173,000 dead people. The House of Representatives - has just passed another farm bill for five more years of these checks.

That's a ?multi-billion $$? shame on Congress and the federal bureaucracy, at the expense of the US taxpayer.

Isn?t it time ?WE?, you and I, taught politicians what the phrase ?bought the farm? really means when November 2008 rolls around ?