the class action lawsuit's been known as the pigford suit because it was timothy pigford that filed the suit and his claim that he was discriminated against. i believe that he has been at this point compensated but i don't have a way to prove that because the records for pigford are sealed. congress at this point can't get at the records for the settlements in the largest class action lawsuit in the history of the united states of america. but here are the numbers, mr. speaker. the numbers work out to be this -- in 1995 in anticipation of and negotiations with a consent decree on the black farmers discrimination case of the department of agriculture against that -- the discrimination of them against black farmers. they anticipated 3,000 would be the sum total universe of the black farmers that had been discriminated against who might file under the pigford class action lawsuit. 3,000. that's out of a universe of 18,000 black farmers. now, whatever whenever you're going to look at the -- now, whenever you're going to look at the applicants you look at the universe to determine then what

that was pigford one. they settled all of the claims that were there. others didn't get filed. but it always was a number greater than the actual number of black farmers and can't have more black farmers than they actually are. and this congress didn't act on it between the house and the senate until late last fall. president obama introduced legislation as a junior senior from illinois in 1989 and 2007 and was instrumental in pushing this through that appropriated $1 moin 15 billion. we have no not -- we still have 94,000 claims and report after report of fraudulent claims and marketing this as perpetration of a fraud across this country and my amendment shuts off the funding to administer or to fund the balance of these funds that this congress must investigate. and the largest republic sip yet was the largest claim, $14 million for her claim. vilsack hired her and later he hired her and then she sued. all of these things are information that we need to find out. this congress cannot be paying out another 1.1.5 billion, going after bad claims. and we have reports and videotap