WASHINGTON — 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 and found that the department has not been conducting the necessary checks to ensure that subsidy payments are proper. 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.
The report 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," Grassley said. | I'll bet they're registered to vote too |
|