The federal government paid $11.3 million in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies from 1995 to 2012 to 50 billionaires or businesses in which they have some form of ownership, according to a report released Thursday by the
Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based research organization.
The billionaires who received the subsidies or owned companies that did include the
Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen; the investment titan
Charles Schwab; and S. Truett Cathy, owner of Chick-fil-A. The billionaires who got the subsidies have a collective net worth of $316 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
The Working Group said its findings were likely to underestimate the total farm subsidies that went to the billionaires on the Forbes 400 list because many of them also received crop insurance subsidies. Federal law prohibits the disclosure of the names of individuals who get crop insurance subsidies, the group said.
The report is being issued as members of the House and Senate are meeting to come up with a new five-year
farm bill. The authors of the report said it is timely, given that lawmakers are debating a
House proposal that would cut nearly $40 billion over 10 years from the food stamp program, which helps provide food for nearly 47 million people. A Senate provision would cut $4.5 billion over the same period.
A report released Wednesday by the
Center for American Progress, a left-leaning research group, found that food stamps kept about five million people above the poverty line last year. The food stamp program was cut by about $5 billion on Nov. 1 when a provision in the 2009 stimulus bill that added funding for the program expired.
Comment: The plaintiff is obviously shooting himself in the foot, but note that this first for internet censorship comes to us courtesy of France, a country with an extraordinary fear of the Internet.