THEY PAY DEAD PEOPLE FARM SUBSIDIES NEED REVIEW

The old joke down Louisiana way is that people ask to be buried in Livingston Parish. Because that way they can still vote. But even in Louisiana they don’t expect to keep getting government checks after they die. Not even the folks down on the bayous — experienced in the ways of the Longs and Edwardses and Perezes — could have thought that one up. No, that’s a federal idea.

The business section reported over the weekend that the U.S. government sends millions of dollars in farm subsidies to dead people every year. And only what the wire services call “a fraction” is recovered.

Apparently even United States senators think the idea is in poor form. The Senate commissioned a study on the problem by the Government Accountability Office, aka the GAO. What investigators found was … a government program.

The GAO says the government — aka We the People — spends more than $20 billion a year propping up farms and agriculture. And it might even be money well spent. Everybody’s got to eat. But when federal checks arrive in the mail addressed to the dead-to the tune of $36 million a year-something’s out of whack. Or as the GAO said with its masterful command of understatement, this policy may call “into question whether these safety-net programs are benefiting the agricultural sector as intended.” Thanks, y’all. Dig deep enough into the numbers cited in this report, and a body might understand why some of these payments are made. And made with just cause. A farmer’s spouse shouldn’t have to lose the tractor, or a lot more, because of a death in the family. Mourning is hard enough without the U.S. government dunning the family. Besides, a contract’s a contract. And if the feds have said they’ll pay for, say, crop insurance this year, the grieving family may need the help more than ever.

But the GAO’s report says that the government also paid out more than $10 million to more than 1,100 people who had been dead for a year or more. You can read the report at gao. gov. If you can bear to.

The government’s investigators don’t call on the Department of Agriculture to stop sending checks to dead farmers. They don’t even call on the government to stop sending checks to farmers who have been dead for more than a planting, growing and harvesting season. What the GAO points out is that the USDA doesn’t have any policies in place that could raise red flags when a farmer covered by one of its programs dies. For the department hasn’t been matching its list of participating farmers with the Social Security Administration’s records. It should be. So that somebody at the USDA could make a phone call to see if the checks should keep going out.

SOME in the federal bureaucracy might think that $36 million is just a rounding error in the scheme of things. After all, $36 million in a $20-billion Farm Bill is “only” 0.18 percent. But $36 million here and $36 million there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. Here’s hoping that taxpayers will think it’s real money-and their elected representatives in Washington will, too. This should be an easy fix. Even though nothing in government, it seems, ever is.

Maybe the biggest surprise in the GAO’s report is this sentence toward the end:

“USDA generally agreed with GAO’s findings and recommendations.”

Goodness. One government agency agreed with another government agency’s criticism of its policies. Generally, at least. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

And some of us thought government didn’t work. It mightas long as outfits like the GAO keep looking at the books.