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Washington – Despite repeatedly asserting that she has never received income from a family farm that has drawn federal subsidies in the past, Rep. Michele Bachmann again listed the farm as a source of income when she filed her 2010 personal financial disclosures late last week.
Bachmann, R-Minn., also reported that the farm had more than doubled in value since 2009.
The property in Independence, Wis., Bachmann Farm Family LP, received nearly $260,000 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2008. At the time, the farm was owned by Bachmann's father-in-law, who died in May 2009.
Bachmann, a Republican presidential candidate running on a platform of lower taxes and smaller government, has been an outspoken critic of agriculture subsidies.
“It's not my (husband's) and my farm,” Bachmann said in a June interview on “Fox News Sunday,” responding to a Los Angeles Times report about the farm subsidies and other government aid the Bachmann family has received over the years. “And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm.”
Bachmann's financial disclosures paint a different picture. Since 2006, she has reported receiving between $37,504 and $120,000 in income from the farm, including between $5,001 and $15,000 that she disclosed for the 2010 calendar year.
In a statement Monday, her campaign said all farm income allocated to Bachmann and her immediate family was retained by the farm, so “they did not directly benefit from the farm income or subsidies.” The statement also said that her late father-in-law had applied for the subsidies, and that the farm had not received any since he died in 2009.
All members of Congress and candidates for federal office are required to disclose certain details about their financial circumstances by filing a yearly form that list assets, income and liabilities within a broad range of amounts.
In 2009, Bachmann listed the farm as an asset worth between $100,001 and $250,000. In her 2010 forms, Bachmann valued the farm between $500,001 and $1 million.
© 2011 McClatchy-Tribune Information Services
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