Tom Vilsack

When Congress last November approved $1.15 billion to settle residual claims of racial discrimination by black farmers against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), supporters lauded the vote and President Obama's signature the following month. This, they said, was justice belatedly done. Yet critics justifiably have argued that the class-action suit rests on an edifice of fraud. One of them, a member of Congress, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is taking action. He's lined up a pair of unnamed witnesses, one a black farmer and the other a longtime USDA employee, willing to tell all. Early this month, Rep. King announced these individuals indicated a willingness to reveal to Congress that plaintiffs' attorneys engaged in an unscrupulous campaign to sign up co-plaintiffs, many of whom never farmed in their lives. The issue now is whether he can persuade his colleagues to hold a hearing.

The scenario is all too familiar: A corporation or government agency, having knuckled under to a group of "civil rights" activists and their lawyers, renders itself an easy target for successful copycat shakedowns. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for over a decade has epitomized such capitulation. And once again it has come through. On October 19 the department announced the settlement of a longstanding lawsuit in which thousands of American Indian farmers and ranchers had claimed discrimination by USDA credit program administrators. The $760 million agreement, which gained preliminary court approval yesterday, follows the agency's capitulation earlier this year in separate lawsuits filed by black and Hispanic farmers. Taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

Demanding large financial settlements on behalf of black farmers has been a cottage industry for litigators in this country for more than a dozen years. It has flourished because few in Congress or in successive administrations have chosen to challenge this juggernaut. It appears now, however, that this passivity is beginning to recede. Late last month, the Senate stripped $1.25 billion from a far larger supplemental defense spending bill that would have compensated black farmers for alleged acts of racial discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) going back to the early Eighties. Following Senate passage, the House followed suit; President Obama signed the measure last Thursday. In the context of the recent and highly-publicized forced resignation of a mid-level black USDA official, Shirley Sherrod, the issue has taken on an extra edge.