Hearing Of The Subcommittee On Agriculture, Rural Development, Food And Drug Administration, And Related Agencies Of The House Committee On Appropriations - FY2011 Budget Hearing For Farm And Foreign Agricultural Services

Statement

The hearing is called to order.
Let me begin by welcoming Jim Miller, Undersecretary for Farm
and Foreign Agricultural Services. He is joined by Jonathan Coppess,
John Brewer, and William Murphy, Administrators of the Farm Service
Agency, Foreign Agricultural Service, and Risk Management Agency
respectively. And Scott Steele, Budget Officer at USDA is also here.
Thank you all for coming today.
This is one of the most important budget hearings that this
subcommittee convenes each year because of the enormous portfolio
that is covered among the agencies before us today -- everything from
farm assistance to food aid to exports. And that is why we rescheduled
this hearing from earlier this week, on the day President Obama signed
the historic health care legislation we just passed, so that we can give
this subject the attention it deserves.
The Farm Service Agency, as you know, administers farm credit,
commodity, emergency assistance and some conservation programs for
farmers and ranchers. Through its network of county offices, it is, as
Undersecretary Miller notes in his testimony, the agency that the
majority of farmers and ranchers interact with most frequently.
First, I want to congratulate FSA on what appears to be a swift and
efficient implementation of the 2008 Farm Bill. I see from today's
testimony that FSA has provided nearly $6 billion in Direct and
Counter-Cyclical Program payments, $1.7 billion in Conservation
Reserve Program payments, and over $318 million through the
Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP), Livestock Forage Disaster Program
(LFP) and Supplemental Revenue Assistance Payments (SURE)
Program.
And I am particularly impressed with how quickly the agency has
set up the Dairy Economic Loss Assistance Payment (DELAP) Program
we established in last year's appropriations. Within three months of
passage, DELAP had already issued $270 million to struggling dairy
farmers, and I -- and they -- thank you for your very competent
implementation of this program.
These successes aside, I would urge the Undersecretary and Mr.
Coppess to continue to work in every possible way to ensure that the
ugly civil rights violations that occurred at FSA, as well as other USDA
agencies, are remedied and that they never occur again. I am glad that
the government has reached an agreement with the African-American
farmers who were discriminated against over the years. However,
remedies for other groups on the receiving end of systematic USDA
discrimination, such as Hispanic, women and Native American farmers
remain to be provided. I ask you assistance for those groups as well.
I would note that I and Congresswoman Anna Eshoo have
introduced legislation providing a process by which women farmers who
were victims of discrimination can make claims against a compensation
fund appropriated by Congress. It also requires USDA to institute
reforms.
One of the other issues facing the FSA in the past several years, as
we all know, is the severe deterioration -- and the consequent
performance problems - of its IT infrastructure. If this year's budget
request is met, Congress will have appropriated $250 million to fix this,
so it is important that the subcommittee gets an accounting for our
investment.
In addition, crop insurance is an area that should is of great interest
to this subcommittee, particularly given concerns about fraud in the
program. This hearing provides us the opportunity to ask RMA what
they are doing to combat wasteful spending in the crop insurance
program.
Switching gears, I also am also concerned about the flat funding of
the PL 480 Title II program and the McGovern-Dole program in the
2011 budget. At a time when over a billion people are now going hungry
or are ill-fed and the world is looking to us for moral leadership, I do not
believe we should be turning away from our strong bipartisan
commitment to international food aid. So, Mr. Brewer, I will be curious
to hear your thoughts about these funding levels.
This flat funding of food aid is in marked contrast to the substantial
funding increases for programs under the title the "National Export
Initiative." I share the president's desire to increase U.S. agriculture
exports, and we will be holding a hearing on how trade agreements
affect the public health in the near future.
As an aside, it seems to me that if we really want to increase our
agriculture exports, one of the easiest ways to do it would be to open
trade with our neighbor, Cuba. Fifty years and eleven presidents after
setting up an embargo policy that has failed to change the political
dynamic there, it seems time to shift U.S. policy toward greater
engagement.
So we have a number of wide-ranging issues on our plate this
morning, as befitting the considerable diversity of responsibilities that
are handled by these agencies. I look forward to hearing from you today
on how we can continue to refine and improve our performance in these
areas, and make good on our commitments to America's farmers and
ranchers.
In any case, thank you all once again for coming, and I look
forward to hearing your testimony. Mr. Kingston, would you like to
make a statement?

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