Here's something I had never considered before reading this report from NBC News.
We know that Trump's bailout(s) for farmers has not paid out the full amount allocated for it and that many farmers have not received payments, but what I didn't know is that the government must pay interest on late payments that are piling up.
At least 31,597 farmers and ranchers received MFP payments late from January to April, according to USDA data obtained by NBC News through a Freedom of Information Act request. From the start of the program in September 2018 through August of this year, 596,851 applications had been submitted.
Payments that failed to meet a processing deadline of 30 days from application submission were considered late and began to accrue interest at a rate of about 3.6 percent. In the first half of the year, the government paid $1,046,392.72 in interest to farmers and ranchers whose MFP checks were delayed.
Department of Agriculture employees who spoke to NBC News off the record say the reason for the delay is the fact that the agency is severely understaffed and, in some cases, local Farm Service Agency offices may have literally only two people processing hundreds if not thousands of claims.
I manically cackled when it occurred to me that the next presidential administration will likely be responsible for dispensing what remains of Trump's bailouts for farmers because that's how long this is going to take. And the next administration will probably do a better job of it once Trump's culture of incompetence is excised from existence.