QandO

July 20, 2004

Eligiblity not required
Posted by McQ

Remember this?

In 1999 under the Clinton administration, the federal government agreed to compensate black farmers for decades of racial discrimination that shut them out of billions of dollars in federal subsidies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to pay at least $50,000 to each eligible black farmer.

Apparently only a part of the money ... the 2.3 billion of your money ... has been paid out:

However, the USDA rejected payments to 82,000 of the 94,000 black farmers who applied -- or about 87 percent -- because of insufficient documentation and missed filing deadlines, according to a report released on Tuesday by the.

The USDA has paid black farmers $800 million of the $2.3 billion settlement, the group said.

And the reaction?

"What we concluded is that this entire settlement has been a complete failure at every turn for the farmers," said Arianne Callender, the activist group's general counsel.

"The only place left for the farmers to receive justice is the United States Congress, which should step in and demand USDA pay off these claims and move on," she added.

Both groups criticized the Bush administration, saying it aggressively fought the black farmers' claims. The environmental group said the Justice Department spent 56,000 hours at a cost of $12 million to oppose some of the compensation claims.

"I think its a national disgrace ... for the Bush administration to come into office and put a screeching halt to payments," Boyd said.

They put a screeching halt to payments?

Let's back up. Didn't the Environmental Working Group report say 87% were rejected for "insufficient documentation and missed filing deadlines".

In other words, the applicants couldn't prove they were eligible or the didn't bother to file within the time set aside for filing, right?

But here's something which isn't reported in the story:

Of those who met the initial deadline, more than 60 percent have received compensation.

Oh. So the majority of the claims which provided documentation in the time prescribed were approved. For some reason that just doesn't sound as damning as "87% were denied". In fact, it indicates that most of the farmers supposedly "denied" never filed. Rather hard to have 87% "not paid" while at the same time having paid 60% of the claims propertly substantiated and filed on time.

Additionally:

The study finds that of the nearly 66-thousand claims filed between the first and second deadlines, more than 63-thousand were rejected by an arbitrator.

Which says to me that even though the applicants were given a second opportunity to file, the vast majority still couldn't substantiate their claim.

By the way, the second deadline was September 2000. As I recall the Clinton administration was still in office.

But its the Bush administration's fault that they just didn't hand out the money to the ineligible, no questions asked?

Silly me. And all this time I thought it was the job of government to safeguard our tax money.

Not to worry though, it appears the Democrats are going to try to ride to the rescue:

John Boyd, president of the National Black Farmers Association, said he met with Democrats on Monday and was "very optimistic" that lawmakers would soon introduce legislation to help black farmers.

How swell.

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