Sioux City Journal - Politically Speaking: Steve King Sees Traction Coming on Pigford

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By Bret Hayworth

For years, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has cried foul and tried to get traction in his quest to get people outraged over a government settlement to black farmers. King wants federal money to be well spent, and he's long been concerned about a 1999 deal that would pay $50,000 each to thousands of black farmers who claimed that they couldn't borrow money for farming due to biased federal loan officers.

King is feeling vindicated, after the New York Times did some heavy lifting and published an April 26 comprehensive recap of the Pigford case involving black farmers.

On Thursday, King tweeted, "#Pigford is colossal fraud by race hustlers. Cabinet Members, Obama, White House involved. Congress must act."

From the NYT piece: "From the start, the claims process prompted allegations of widespread fraud and criticism that its very design encouraged people to lie: because relatively few records remained to verify accusations, claimants were not required to present documentary evidence that they had been unfairly treated or had even tried to farm."

Perhaps 3,100 of the 40,000 claims are apparently suspicious. A second broadened settlement could give payments to women and Latino farmers, covering 90,000 people altogether.

Beyond decrying the Pigford settlement over much of his 11-year congressional career, King has sought to prevent the payments from going out, but he's had scant support from other legislators. An NYT reporter asked why that is, and King replied, "Never underestimate the fear of being called a racist."

In 2012, King filed an amendment to HR 2112, an agriculture program appropriations bill, to prevent money from being used to settle claims with the so-called Pigford II settlement.

"In the 2008 Farm Bill, Congress limited taxpayers' exposure to the Pigford II settlement program at $100 million, a figure that was deemed sufficient to resolve the racial discrimination claims leveled against the United States Department of Agriculture by black farmers," said King in a release.

"Since that time, a lame-duck Democratic Congress agreed to President Obama's request to pump an additional $1.15 billion into the Pigford II settlement program, doing so even though the program is rife with credible allegations of massive fraud that have not been fully investigated."

In a late April tweet, King said he feels "vindicated" by the Times article. His tweet this week shows he hopes the ground is shifting, that the settlement will get more congressional oversight.

UPDATE AT 9:50 A.M. -- In a statement provided to the Journal, King said, "We need the news media to continue writing and reporting on Pigford. If it gets more strength in the press, Congress will be more willing to investigate.

"The Obama Administration knows that if they can get the $4.4 billion distributed, it will be impossible to recover, no matter how fraudulent. I plan on doing my job of Congressional oversight but it would not be strategically wise to telegraph a strategy."

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