Big Profits From Crop Insurance Criticized(Waxman calls for hearing)

[maddezmom]

Source: Washington Post

By Dan Morgan and Gilbert M. Gaul
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, May 4, 2007; Page A04

Private companies are taking advantage of a poorly designed crop insurance program for farmers to reap "excessive" profits while taxpayers absorb most of the costs and risks, investigators told a House committee yesterday.

Republican and Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee reacted with calls for major changes in the insurance program, which has paid out $26 billion over the past 10 years. It is rare for a panel other than the Agriculture Committee to take on a major farm program in an investigative hearing.

Oversight Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the crop insurance system is "a textbook example of waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending." Citing testimony from the Agriculture Department's inspector general and a report from the Government Accountability Office, Waxman said that "over $8 billion in taxpayer funds have been squandered in excess payments to insurers and other middlemen" since 2000.

Congress established federal crop insurance during the Depression. The Agriculture Department sets the premiums that farmers pay to insure against weather losses and falling prices, but the program is operated by 16 government-approved private companies. Last year, those firms wrote 1.1 million insurance policies covering 370 commodities grown on 242 million acres.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050302235.html

[Wickerman]

1. Republican and Democratic members of the House Oversight ...

Let's see, this has been going for 8 years. Waxman is now the chair and leading the charge. Yet, after 8 years of inactivity by the Rethugs the Dems come in, expose the issue and start on cleanup and Rethuglicans get top billing? I mean, that makes no sense. D before R even. :crazy: