FRANKFORT — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul Wednesday said his position on farm subsidies is “moderate” and claimed the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year paid 234 deceased Florida farmers more than $9 million.

But the Executive Director of the Florida Farm Service Agency of USDA called that claim “absolutely ludicrous” and said in fact, there were payments to the estates – all legitimate – to only five producers who died during the crop year after the payments had been approved.

Paul was a guest Wednesday on the WHAS-84 Radio talk show hosted by Mandy Connell who asked Paul about his statements during the Republican primary that he opposed farm subsidies, a statement he made during a forum on KET.

Connell asked if Paul “would do away with” farm subsidies and he responded: “I’m actually much more moderate than that. My moderate position is let’s start out by eliminating farm subsidies for dead farmers. In Miami last year, they did a survey of the farm subsidies, and just in the Miami area they found 234 dead farmers receiving $9.1 million. So let’s just agree we get rid of farm subsidies for dead farmers first.”

Paul’s campaign manager Jesse Benton said Paul was quoting from a Readers’ Digest article and provided a link to the article: http://www.rd.com/content/printContent.do?contentId=179127&KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=500&width=790&modal=true.

"Dr. Paul was quoting a Readers Digest article by Michael Crowley, a highly respected independent journalist who also writes for Time magazine,” Benton said. “We can debate about precise figures, but the un-debatable fact is that farm subsidies benefit the rich over the poor, big corporations over family farms and are fraught with waste, fraud and abuse.. As a United States Senator, Rand Paul will launch a through investigation into this and all areas of big government to bring real spending reform to our out-of-control government."

The Readers’ Digest article, however, quotes a Nov. 24, 2009 report by CBS4-Miami, a Miami television station, which quoted roughly the same figures Paul used – 234 deceased farmers paid $9.5 million. (That report can be found on the web at http://cbs4.com/local/iteam.dead.farmers.2.1329682.html.) It says the station’s reporters got that information using data from the World Environmental Group, a non-profit watchdog group in Washington and matching it to social security numbers.

But Tim Manning, the Florida Farm Service Agency director, said the information is wildly inaccurate and said Florida “unequivocally did not pay 234 dead farmers.”

“There were not 234 famers paid last year who were deceased,” Manning said. “There was not $9.1 million paid. That is absolutely false. I have no idea where he’s getting his information.”

Manning said there were five such payments in Florida last year involving just over $100,000 and all five were legitimate. They occurred because producers applied, received approval and then later died during the crop year. Manning said those are “earned payments” and were legally distributed to the dead persons’ estates.

Manning spent Wednesday afternoon retrieving the data, saying his supervisors in USDA and the Obama administration, including Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, have made it a point to “emphasize absolute transparency.” He said he could have provided the data either to Paul or to other groups like WEG had they asked.

Paul said Wednesday the government paid people up to $1 billion – including “some in my family” – not to grow crops, a program sometimes referred to as the soil bank. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Paul said. Instead, America should produce more and export the excess.

The farm subsidy question is likely to continue as an issue, given the emphasis both Paul and his Democratic opponent Jack Conway place on western Kentucky with is reliance on agriculture. The two are scheduled to appear at a forum hosted by the Kentucky Farm Bureau at its Louisville headquarters on July 22. KFB spokesman Dan Smaldone said Wednesday both men have committed to the forum at which they’ll take questions relating to agriculture from the KYB board.

Paul also told Connell there’s nothing hypocritical about his willingness now to accept fundraising help from Republican Senators who voted for the bank bailout in 2008. During the primary, Paul criticized his main opponent, Secretary of State Trey Grayson, for accepting fundraising help from Republican Senators who voted for the Wall Street bailout and promised he would not accept such contributions. But last week, Paul attended such a fundraiser in Washington, hosted by 12 Republicans, nine of whom voted for the bailout.

“I won my primary race and the number one issue was my opposition to the bank bailout,” Paul responded. “That doesn’t change. (I’m) absolutely opposed to the bailout. What happens is, when you win the primary, my message won, so those people now are endorsing my message.”

He went on to say that despite predictions by economists of an “economic calamity,” the country should not have bailed out the troubled banks but allowed them to go through “an organized bankruptcy” which he said would have been better for the country and ultimately for the banks.

Ronnie Ellis writes for CNHI News Service and is based in Frankfort, Ky. He may be contacted by email at rellis@cnhi.com. Follow CNHI News Service stories on Twitter at www.twitter.com/cnhifrankfort.