Flashback Montana: Race-Based Farm Loan Forgiveness Programs

With less than a month until election day here in Montana, the fake news and the phony campaign commercials are flying all over the place. Here's a flashback from 2021 showing that, YES, they DID push race-based farm loan forgiveness programs.

Seeing the bias from the so-called "fact-checkers" elsewhere in the media is so bad you just have to laugh at it. As Navy SEAL veteran Tim Sheehy leads in the polls for the 2024 US Senate race in Montana, liberal Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) has been getting hammered in campaign ads for race-based farm programs supported by Democrats. As a result, Tester's backers are desperately trying to deflect from his far Left agenda.

In case you missed it, here is my report from March of 2021: Montana Senator Sounds Off: Race-Based Farm Loan Forgiveness

At the time, I wrote how this was one of the most shocking things Congressional Democrats shoved into the so-called COVID relief package.

"This is racism." That's how Montana Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) summed up the race-based farm loan forgiveness plan that was snuck into the COVID relief bill by the Democrats. He's referring to the nearly $5 billion in spending for "socially disadvantaged farmers" to get loan forgiveness from the US Department of Agriculture.

And just what would have qualified you as a "socially disadvantaged farmer"?

According to Senator Daines' office:

This money is entirely determined by a farmer's ethnicity and has nothing to do with actual need. So, a wealthy Hispanic farmer—or any other minority—in California could get tons of money, while a struggling white farmer in Montana gets nothing. This is not fair to a majority of Montana farmers.

Senator Daines joined us on the radio back in March of 2021 to highlight the race-based spending in the COVID bill.

Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) also hammered the legislation during a Fox News appearance, as The Daily Caller reported at the time:

This is out of control liberalism and in this bill … most of the money’s not spent this year: 90% of it has nothing to do with COVID,” Graham said, noting that the legislation will forgive loans for farmers but only if they’re “socially disadvantaged, if you’re African-American, some other minority, but if you’re a white person, if you’re a white woman, no forgiveness as reparations. What does that got to do with COVID?”

Democrats, of course, attacked Lindsay Graham, claiming that the legislation will help black farmers, even though The Hill reported that only about 25% of those who would receive the aid are black.

Here's how the Farm Bureau described the provision:

While the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 does not appropriate funds directly, it’s estimated that $4 billion will be used to provide direct payments of up to 120% of a socially disadvantaged, e.g., Black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian American,  farmer’s or rancher’s outstanding debt as of Jan. 1, 2021. The loans include USDA Farm Service Agency direct farm loans, USDA guaranteed loans and Commodity Credit Corporation farm storage loans, among others. The additional 20% is intended to pay off the taxes associated with the amount of the direct payment related to the outstanding debt.

By the way, Glenn Woods down in Wyoming also had a writeup that we shared at the time reporting on how a judge ordered a halt to the race-based COVID relief.