More than 92,000 “black farmers” have signed up for reparations from the Obama USDA after the Pigford case was extended this past year. That’s five times the number of blacks who were actually farming during the time period in question and would possibly qualify for the reparations.
Pigford v. Glickman was a class action lawsuit against the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), alleging racial discrimination in its allocation of farm loans and assistance between 1983 and 1997. The lawsuit ended with a settlement in which the U.S. government agreed to pay African American farmers $50,000 each if they had attempted to get USDA help but failed. To date, almost $1 billion has been paid or credited to the farmers under the settlement’s consent decree. Democrats want to add another $1.2 billion to the money pot and continue with the reparations.
FOX News Special Report covered this sensitive topic in August:
Last week the Senate Democrats passed legislation that approved spending $4.6 billion to settle two lawsuits to black farmers and indians.
Bloomberg reported:
Passage of the measure, by voice vote, unblocks a legislative logjam that has thwarted payouts, negotiated by the Obama administration, of $1.15 billion to the black farmers and $3.4 billion to the American Indians.
“We are one step closer to ensuring that the black farmers and Native Americans in these suits are fully compensated for past failures of judgment by the government,” U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in a statement after the Senate vote. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said he hopes to seek a vote after Congress returns from a week-long recess on Nov. 29.
President Barack Obama praised the Senate action and urged the House to move forward with the bill “as they did last year.”
The House included the funding in war supplemental legislation it passed this summer, but it must vote on the settlements again. The Senate version of the war supplemental did not contain the funding to settle the lawsuits because Republicans objected to the proposed financing method, saying it added to the deficit.
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