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<div class="">July 30, 2013</div>
<h1>Millions in U.S. Subsidies Go to Dead Farmers</h1>
<h6 class="">By
<span>
<a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/ron_nixon/index.html" rel="author" title="More Articles by RON NIXON"><span>RON NIXON</span></a></span></h6>
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<p>
WASHINGTON — The federal government pays millions of dollars in farm
subsidies each year to farmers who have died, because the Agriculture
Department lacks the proper controls to make sure the money it sends is
going to the right people, a government <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/07/31/us/politics/31farm-document.html">audit</a> has found. </p>
<p>
The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress,
said the problem involved several agencies within the department.
</p>
<p>
The Natural Resources Conservation Service, which oversees the
Agriculture Department’s conservation programs, sent out $10.6 million
in payments between 2008 and 2012 to more than 1,000 people who had been
dead for more than a year, according to the report. </p>
<p>
The Risk Management Agency, which administers the crop insurance
program, paid $22 million to more than 3,400 policyholders who had been
dead for at least two years. The G.A.O. said that some of those payments
might have been made while the farmer was still alive, but that there
was no way to know for sure. </p>
<p>
The findings were released as the House and the Senate prepared to meet
to work out their differences on a farm bill that would greatly expand
some subsidies, like crop insurance. The report raises questions about
the ability of the Agriculture Department to monitor the programs for
waste, fraud and abuse. </p>
<p>
The Agriculture Department generally agreed with the findings in the
report, but said it disagreed with the characterization that it did not
have sufficient controls in place to detect improper payments. </p>
<p>
Still, the department acknowledged that its controls to identify deceased individuals could be applied more effectively. </p>
<p>
Controls over crop insurance, in particular, have been questioned after
government investigators found a huge fraud ring last year in North
Carolina that for decades siphoned over $100 million from the program.
The fraud ring involved insurance agents, adjusters, farmers and dozens
of others. </p>
<p>
Environmental activists said the report pointed to the need for changes in agriculture subsidy programs. </p>
<p>
“Not only are unlimited crop insurance subsidies flowing to the largest
and most successful farm businesses, they are now going to deceased
policyholders,” said Scott Faber, vice president of the Environmental
Working Group, a Washington research organization, which has been
critical of farm subsidies. “This irresponsible use of scarce taxpayer
dollars reinforces just how broken the system is.” </p>
<p>
The G.A.O. said the Agriculture Department had had some success in
finding improper payments. The department identified payments to nearly
173,000 deceased individuals from 1999 to 2005, the report said. The
Agriculture Department recovered about $1 billion in improper payments.
</p>
<p>
Still, the G.A.O. said more could be done. The auditors suggested that
the Agriculture Department use the Social Security Administration’s
Death Master File to identify payments made to dead individuals. The
G.A.O. said the agencies used an incomplete version of the data that did
not include all deaths. </p>
<p>
Unless the agencies begin using the full Death Master File, they “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 report said. </p>
<p>
The Agriculture Department said in May that the Risk Management Agency
had begun using a new computer program that compared the full Social
Security death data against crop insurance payments. </p>
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