U.S. Watchdog to Investigate Trump’s Farm Bailout Program
“It’s clear that the Trump administration’s trade assistance payments pick winners and losers rather than help the farmers who have been hit the hardest by this president’s trade policies,” Ms. Stabenow said in a statement on Friday.
Ms. Stabenow requested that the G.A.O. study why payments disproportionately went to large farm operations, if the Agriculture Department was effectively preventing fraud, waste and abuse in the program and whether the model the U.S.D.A. used to distribute payments accurately reflected trade damage that farmers experienced. Democrats have complained that the program paid subsidies to some farmers that did not need them while leaving those that were suffering from Mr. Trump’s tariff war with China without benefits.
The G.A.O. is a nonpartisan congressional watchdog that audits government programs. The agency notified Ms. Stabenow’s office in a letter transmitted on Thursday that it would take up the investigation.
Democrats are not the only ones that have expressed concerns with the farm bailout program.
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, joined with Senator Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and Representative Rosa DeLauro, Democrat of Connecticut, in asking Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, to investigate JBS, a Brazilian-owned meat-processing that received $67 million in bailout funds. Lawmakers raised concerns about the payments given the company’s past legal problems: In 2017, two of JBS’s former top executives, brothers Wesley Batista and Joesley Batista, pleaded guilty to corruption charges in Brazil. The brothers remain majority shareholders with control over the company.
Mr. Rubio and Mr. Menendez also asked the Treasury Department to investigate possible ties that JBS has with the government of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, whom the United States does not recognize as the legitimate president.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/us/politics/trump-farm-bailout-investigation.html?emc=rss&partner=rss