Nothing particularly surprising here:
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.
The report cited a 1,900-acre soybean and corn farm in Illinois that collected $400,000 on behalf of an owner who lived in Florida before his death in 1995. The company did not notify the government of the death but certified each year that the dead shareholder, who owned 40 percent of the company, was “actively engaged” in managing the farm.
Of course I disapprove of this kind of waste, but it is really hard to get my knickers in a twist these days about 1 billion over seven years when we are closing on a half a trillion spent on the Iraq war, with a good bit of that wasted. You remember that war- it was going to pay for itself.
Regardless, at some point, when our government is approaching sanity, we need to have a serious discussion about why these subsidies need to continue, period.
Gus
Who was it who said “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”?
John Cole
Everett Dirksen is attributed the quote, but neever said it:
Jake
As fertilizer?
I think you touch on one reason this sort of thing happens. The amounts the various agencies deal with are so vast that $400K here and there doesn’t even register…
Unless there is someone breathing down their neck to make sure they don’t screw up. Medicare still has problems with payments being made to dead doctors, for dead patients, etc, etc but this has become unusual because there’s several layers of people who do nothing but double and triple check payments.
Pb
So we can pay dead people to not raise hogs, of course…
Zifnab
And this all goes back to the party of “Government doesn’t work!” Republicans argued that if you outsource the problems to businesses, they’d do a better job of handling management of bureaucracy. So, is it any surprise Republicans run a government in which bureaucracies are wasteful and inefficient? Of course, the more corrupt Republicans (read: nearly all of them) have taken to pooh-poohing government oversight of the people they outsource bureaucracy out to. And oversight is expensive, as any business will tell you.
What the government needs is good managers. Smart, educated, talented people – the types of people that invent the internet – to come in and make government run like a successful business, rather than a business that tanks after 8 years of bad practices and pissing money away in the desert.
cain
Well, everyone needs good managers. It doesn’t matter whether it’s government or corporation. Supposedly, a companys need to make a profit is what forces it to be more efficient. I don’t think I’ve seen that being part of a fairly large company.
cain
The Other Steve
Because fundamentally, the nations ability to supply it’s own food is the top National Security issue we have to deal with.
Beyond that, there are areas of negotiation.
I would prefer it if farmers were able to make enough off of their product to pay for the cost of raising it. We didn’t have subsidies, and supply and demand governed what farmers raised.
But unless you’re willing to take on Cargill and ADM, we are going to have subsidies.
Bubblegum Tate
I’ve long thought it was something of a cruel joke at America’s expense that Bush used to call himself the “CEO President” when his track record as an actual executive was one of abject failure completely unblemished by success (and always immediately followed by a bailout from daddy).
cleek
try shorting the IRS $400K
HunterBlackLuna
Bubblegum, I think that’s the PERFECT analogy for Bush, then. I’m going to start calling him the CEO President right away. After all, while he can’t bankrupt America, he’s doing a heckuva job trying and we’re already pretty much flat broke in the morals division.
Pb
That just sounds like truth in advertising to me–the golden parachute at work, the Ken Lay model of governance, etc., etc.
jenniebee
oh noes! how will we pay for all that? higher taxes? cut spending to the bare bones? massive gold farming?
Is there a lightbulb going on over anybody else’s head here?
RandyH
Speaking of waste on the Iraq war VS the expected costs of that war, I remember watching Nightline before the war started and Andrew Natsios of US AID was on the show and had the gall to insist that not only would the war pay for itself from oil revenues, but that the US would not ever have to advance more than $1.7 Billion for reconstruction. That was all that was being budgeted and that was all that we would ever spend, MAX! Ted Koppel was beside himself and challenged the guy, but he kept insisting that’s all it would cost. Transcript
Pb
Yeah, I stopped reading there. That explains quite a bit, though. Also:
Note that Sudan is still #1 on the Failed States Index, whereas Iraq is only #2. Nice going there, Natsios!
les
We have to keep the occasional “small” farmer going, so the Repubs have somebody to hold up as an example while they try to get rid of “death taxes.” Given that the vast majority of ag subsidies go to monster corporate farmers, I give you the “why:” we loves us some corporate donors; and cheap food keeps the peasants quiet.
BIRDZILLA
And wealthy wackos like TED TURNER gets farm substaties and he has never done a lick of farm work his whole pampered spoiled brat life