Federal crop insurance program biggest winner The audit requires all government agencies to “report on any high-dollar overpayments identified in programs that are susceptible to significant improper payments.” By definition, the “threshold for a reportable overpayment” is “more than $5,000 in total to an individual for the quarter and as more (sic) than $25,000 in total to an entity …” Of the seven internal USDA agencies or departments that reported payments of at least that size, the Food Nutrition Service — the bureaucratic home to food assistance programs like SNAP and the National School Lunch Program — had zero “number of reported high-dollar overpayments” for zero dollars in 2012. The winner of this biggest loser race, according to the USDA’s inspector general, was the Risk Management Agency’s Federal Crop Insurance Program. In
2012, the RMA reported at least 70 overpayments in the federal crop insurance that totaled more than $14.6 million, or an average overpayment of $209,301. What’s more, while those overpayments numbered just 30 percent of all USDA mistakes in 2012, the total amount of crop insurance “overpayment” cash equaled 72 percent of all wrongly paid USDA cash. Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., ranking member of the House ag committee, believes those numbers don’t even show the iceberg tip of crop insurance errors and fraud. Last April Peterson publicly estimated that “there is five times as much fraud” in federal crop insurance than in SNAP.
OPINION
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU.
FRUSTRATION GOT THE BEST OF YOU? ARE YOU BEING PURSUED BY THE BIG SEED COMPANIES’ SALES PEOPLE?
Simple. Year upon year of declining fraud and no evidence of overpayment in the SNAP will likely bring more claims of fraud and deep cuts in funding to SNAP while more and bigger overpayments and more alleged fraud in crop insurance will bring it more federal funds and less scrutiny. But, hey, check my math while I get some more red licorice. Alan Guebert’s “Farm and Food File” is published weekly in more than 70 newspapers in North America. Contact him at agcomm@farmandfoodfile.com. Past columns, news and events are posted at www.farmandfoodfile.com. ❖
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How’s this square with my new understanding of new math?
THE LAND, JANUARY 17, 2014
GUEBERT, from pg. 2A under 6 percent ...” Those facts, Ohio’s Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown told the newspaper, point to one conclusion: “When detractors of SNAP overstate fraud to further their own political goals, they not only hurt families struggling with a tough economy, they engage in blatant dishonesty.” Blatant or not, it is dishonest to claim that SNAP, given years of irrefutable facts, is a program ripe with fraud, overpayment and corruption. There are other government programs, even other USDA programs, that feature higher — and in many cases, far higher — rates of fraud, overpayment and corruption than SNAP. For example, on Aug. 12, the USDA released its annual “Executive Order 13520 Audit Report” for 2012 — www.usda.gov/oig/webdocs/50024-0003-11.pdf.
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