WestVirginiaRebel Posted July 29, 2013 Share Posted July 29, 2013 Washington Times: The federal government is still paying out millions of dollars a year in subsidies to dead farmers, according to a new government audit released Monday that said the Agriculture Department doesn’t do routine checks required to make sure it is paying benefits to the right people. The Government Accountability Office said that from 2008 to 2012 one agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, made $10.6 million payments on behalf of more than 1,100 people who’d been dead at least a year. Another branch, the Risk Management Agency, paid out $22 million to more than 3,400 policyholders who’d been dead at least two years. Some of the payments may have been legal because they were for work done before the farmers died, but GAO said the problem is the two agencies don’t perform the routine checks — such as looking at the Social Security lists — to see. “Until and unless NRCS and RMA develop and implement procedures to have their payment or subsidy data records matched against SSA’s complete death master file, either through coordination with FSA or on their own, these agencies cannot know if they are providing payments to, or subsidies on behalf of, deceased individuals; how often they are providing such payments or subsidies; or in what amounts,” the investigators wrote. GAO said the Agriculture Department has shown some progress since a previous audit found hundreds payments to 172,801 dead people, totaling some $1.1 billion, between 1999 and 2005. ________ I for one welcome our zombie farmers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Casino67 Posted July 29, 2013 Share Posted July 29, 2013 Isn't there any recourse against the people who cashed the checks fraudulently? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now