Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-MN) used her tour of flood damage in Iowa Monday as an opportunity to assert that it was a waste to pay African American farmers who sued the government over discrimination.
Bachmann and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told reporters that funds intended for a 1999 settlement of the Pigford case should be diverted to flood victims along the Missouri River, according the The Associated Press.
The U.S. government agreed to pay African American farmers $50,000 each if they had been unfairly denied loans by the United States Department of Agriculture. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed legislation authorizing $1.2 billion for black farmers who were denied payouts in an earlier settlement.
King charged that most of the latest settlement “was just paid out in fraudulent claims.”
“That’s another at least $1.3 billion,” he said. “I’d like to apply that money to the people that are under water right now.”
Bachmann agreed.