Payment Limitation in Georgia

Cox and the Atlanta Journal Constitution have another article on payment limitation .
I had to register to see this article, but not the earlier article.

It's a complex story, with USDA's Inspector General, FSA's county, state, and DC offices, the Senator who leads the Ag Committee, and Justice all playing a role. The bottom line is:

• if there were no payment limitation rules, McNair would be farming the same crops on the same acreage but without the superstructure of paperwork and fake accounting. ("Fake" is pejorative, I know.)
• if his neighbors thought he were cheating on his income taxes they wouldn't be as likely to condone the schemes. But since it's FSA bureaucrats depriving hard working farmers of money, McNair will be at least tolerated by the community.
  
• because McNair and his fellow farmers (on the county committee) are pillars of the community, they pack a lot of political clout. So Congress isn't really serious about enforcing payment limitations (ask Senator Grassley). Can you imagine how dispirited Jim Baxa might feel about the task? (Full disclosure--I used to be his wife's boss.)
  

I hadn't thought about it before, the issue of whether IRS auditors and USDA bureaucrats should coordinate is interesting.

And to be fair to Sen. Chambliss, Clinton's first Secretary of Agriculture had his chief of staff convicted of an offense because of mishandling of payment limitation cases.