More than 100 people who live in Madison cashed hundreds of thousands of dollars in farm subsidy checks from the federal government last year. The checks were sent straight to their urban homes ? some of them fancy places on the lake, in Maple Bluff and Shorewood Hills ? regardless of need, high prices for crops or whether the recipients are even farmers. It?s a system ripe for savings as Congress and its “supercommittee” try to stem the federal government?s chronic budget deficit and soaring debt.
The owner of a Shorewood Hills home valued at $1.1 million received several hundred dollars in farm subsidies last year. So did a retired UW-Madison physics professor and a former high-ranking local government bureaucrat, according to EWG data and State Journal research.