ThinkProgress noted last year that multi-millionaire movie star Tom Cruise manipulated a tax break meant to help struggling farmers in order to pay just $400 of property taxes on his $18 million Colorado estate. Cruise was able to pay so little because he allowed some sheep to graze on the estate, thus qualifying the land as agricultural and making it eligible for a big tax break.

According to the Miami Herald, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) has done much the same thing, letting cows graze on a plot of land that he owns, which dramatically lowered his tax bill:

Thanks to a half-dozen cows that graze Nelson’s 55 acres on the Indian River, he saved $43,000 in property taxes last year…The land has a full market value of $2.7 million, but the county tax collector uses the agricultural value of $210,000. That reduced Nelson’s tax bill in 2011 to $3,696. [...]

Nelson’s property may never have draw attention but over the years he has put some of it up for sale, netting at least $1.4 million. Three of the five lots were not classified as agriculture, according to records he provided to the Times. Two others were agriculture, as is a sixth lot he currently has for sale at about $540,000. On those, he has gotten the benefit of low taxes before selling at market value.

“I pay all the taxes owed on the pasture land,” Nelson said, defending the tax break. “This pasture has been in my family since 1924 and it’s been a cow pasture since 1950.” But this doesn’t change the fact that the state lost much needed revenue on tax breaks that were meant to aid family farmers, but instead went to land that is decidedly not a farm.

As Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out, there’s an easy fix for this problem, as states could just “replace current agricultural land valuation systems with an agricultural circuit breaker that makes property tax relief available only to real family farms.” “This would not only ensure that Senators and movie stars do not abuse the system, it would also better target those farmers most in need of property tax relief — the farmers for whom the tax loopholes were presumably written in the first place,” CTJ noted.

As Rick Santorum has risen in the polls in the GOP presidential race, his campaign has been unsuccessful in its attempt to “turn the political conversation away from the social and cultural issues that have dominated his quest for the Republican presidential nomination so far and focus instead on the economy.” The former Pennsylvania senator continues to bring religion into the campaign, saying that President Obama’s theology is not “based on the Bible” and voicing his opposition to prenatal testing.

Last week, Santorum said to voters in Idaho, “Are economics important? You bet? Are jobs important? You bet.” In last night’s GOP presidential debate, Santorum had a chance to show voters that he really did care about the economy. Instead, he failed to even say the word jobs once:

In total, the four GOP contenders mentioned the word “jobs” only 10 times over the span of two hours — and former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) uttered the word a grand total of zero times. [...] Santorum had entered Wednesday night’s debate riding on a wave of support in the polls and among conservative voters in key primary states. His debate performance — during which he struggled to answer questions about his record in Congress — could serve to blunt that momentum heading into next week’s contests in Michigan and Arizona.

Santorum also never mentioned the unemployed, though he did repeat “spending” and “conservative” over and over. According to Gallup, 31 percent of Americans say the economy is the biggest issue facing the U.S. Thirty-one percent say it’s unemployment and jobs.

Already, three states have announced plans to divert some of their share of the $26 billion foreclosure fraud settlement with the nation’s five biggest banks away from helping homeowners (which is the money’s intended purpose), and towards other parts of their respective budgets. Wisconsin and Missouri are planning to use the money to plug budget holes, while Ohio wants to use the funding to demolish vacant homes.

And those states are evidently not the only ones planning to use the settlement funds for something other than helping troubled homeowners, as the Associated Press noted:

In Pennsylvania, where a fourth straight budget deficit is projected, Democrats are pressing the Republican-run attorney general’s office to use some of its $69 million payment to offset $2 billion in cuts to programs that benefit education, the elderly, disabled or poor. [...]

Vermont plans to use $2.4 million from the settlement to help balance its budget. Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler said about 10 percent of his state’s $62.5 million payment will be made available for the governor and lawmakers to spend as they choose.

It’s understandable, given the massive budget cuts that states have had to implement in the last few years to comply with balanced budget requirements during a recession, that there is a temptation for state lawmakers to use an unexpected windfall to plug budget holes. But as good as their intentions are, that is not the purpose of the settlement. Settlement money is meant to make up for bank malfeasance by reducing loan principal for underwater homeowners or to compensate families to lost their homes due to potentially wrongful foreclosure.

Members of the Florida congressional delegation have already penned a letter to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) in an attempt to head off a similar effort to siphon away funds, writing, “given the ongoing state of Florida’s housing crisis, we strongly urge you to use these settlement funds for housing relief, and resist any effort to divert the funds to close shortfalls in the state budget.” Hopefully more states don’t go down the road of the six listed above, and actually use the settlement money to alleviate the ongoing pain of the housing crisis.