| A report by the Government Accountability Office says USDA paid $1.1 billion in subsidies to 172,801 dead people between 1999 through 2005. Forty percent of that money went to people who had been for at least three years, the report found. Nineteen percent went to individuals who had been dead for at least seven years. In a case involving an Illinois farm, USDA made $400,000 in payments from 1999 through 2005 in the name of someone who died in 1995, the report said. |