Who: About 1.5 million farms a year growing corn, wheat, cotton, rice, and other program crops. What: Emergency “market loss assistance” and other ad hoc payments that Congress passed four years running as crop prices collapsed in the late 1990s.
n/a
committed or authorized
$27.6B
paid out
$0
recovered (repayments, dividends, fees)
$27.6B
net cost (grants (not repaid))
Outcome
All ad hoc and emergency farm payments by calendar year: $2.8B (1998), $7.8B (1999), $8.5B (2000), $8.5B (2001). About $21.7B of it was market-loss payments, paid on each farm's historical base acres.
Legal authority: P.L. 105-277, 106-78, 106-224, and 107-25.