Mr. Chairman, I beg to differ. Accounting costs per farm is a tax-deductible expense. They are right in there on the.... There's no big deal to put a line on the form to find out exactly what it's costing farmers, since we know it costs them a great deal to find out what it is.
Now, this is where I find this amateurish attitude by the department. They say, “We're okay. We don't worry about the farmers.” We've heard about this “Let's go after the overpayments, but don't worry about the underpayments.” We know this has been an extremely complex, onerous application for farmers, and yet you haven't bothered to find out what it's costing farmers. In some cases they fill out forms that generate nothing in return. Why?