USDA Looks To Forgive Rural Loans

The American Rescue Plan, according to USDA Head Tom Vilsack, has a variety of programs and plans to help rural America. Once of those plans includes loan forgiveness in rural areas.

"Two types of loans we're dealing with: direct loans and guaranteed loans," Vilsack noted. "Let me deal with the direct loans first. To the extent that it's a relatively straight forward loan we're going to try and get these done, sort of in a tired circumstances as quickly as possible."

Vilsack recently told lawmakers when it comes to Black farmers.

"120% basically. The loan gets paid off, 20% goes to the farmer for the purpose of paying the tax."

He said some farmers may want to spread out the debt forgiveness over several years for tax reasons.

"On the guaranteed loan side, remember we're dealing with banks where we have essentially guaranteed the loan. And we have sent a letter today to those banks basically indicating that they are to take no further action whatsoever to foreclose on farmers." Vilsack stated. "That we are going to work with them to get these loans paid off."

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