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Bush administration officials will defend their proposed fiscal 2009 Agriculture Department budget this week in front of House Democrats that have been critical of the plan.
The new head of the Agriculture Department, Secretary Ed Schafer, will make his House debut on Wednesday at a hearing before the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. The following day, the panel will hold another hearing to focus on the department's conservation budget.
Schafer and Natural Resources Conservation Service chief Arlen Lancaster will face Democrats who have criticized the administration's proposed cuts to community water grants, conservation funds and the Food and Drug Administration.
Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who last year fought to increase water and renewable energy grants that the administration zeroed out, called the proposed budget cuts a "tiresome annual ritual" on release of the budget last week.
Overall, the fiscal 2009 USDA budget would cut discretionary spending by 4.8 percent. The major increases in the budget would go to food assistance programs to cover the growing number of people who qualify for food stamps and other aid programs. Two of the hardest hit areas of the budget would be research and conservation, which would each see budget cuts of almost 15 percent.
The administration's proposal would cut more than 10 percent from USDA's research budget, which includes a wide range of programs, from livestock safety to farm-based energy, biotechnology and food safety. USDA Deputy Secretary Chuck Conner said last week that the cuts came from wiping out congressional earmarks for different research projects.
The White House also made what has become an annual effort to zero out funding for a number of discretionary programs it says are redundant, including local watershed surveys and flood prevention programs. The Bush administration has tried to eliminate the programs in previous years, but congressional appropriators have restored them each year. DeLauro noted she plans to restore the funds again this year.
This year the administration also targeted a popular renewable energy program in its spending cuts for the first time. The budget includes no funding for grants or loans for the "Section 9006" renewable energy program, which gives money to help farmers improve energy efficiency on their farms and develop small on-farm business ventures in wind, solar, biomass or geothermal energy.
The House and Senate both proposed large increases for the renewable energy program in last year's farm bill and appropriations measures, and the administration had proposed expanding it in the farm bill. USDA included it this year in a list of programs that "serve limited purposes for which financing and other assistance is available."
Conservation programs
The majority of USDA conservation programs fall under mandatory spending set in the farm bill, though appropriators have frequently cut allotments below those levels.
The House, Senate and White House each proposed to increase conservation spending in the next farm bill. But in the absence of a new bill, which is still being negotiated, the administration's budget would terminate funding for conservation programs that are expiring and keep other programs in line with spending levels from the 2002 farm bill.
The administration's budget would zero out the Grasslands Reserve Program and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program. And the proposed funding for the Conservation Security Program and for USDA's largest conservation and land retirement program -- the Conservation Reserve Program -- would not be enough to enroll new farmers in either program this year, according to Scott Steele, USDA's budget director.
Schedule: The hearing on the USDA budget is set for Wednesday, Feb. 13, at 10 a.m., in 2362-A Rayburn. The NRCS hearing is set for Thursday, Feb. 14, at 2 p.m., in 2362-A Rayburn.
Witnesses: Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer and Natural Resources Conservation Service chief Arlen Lancaster.
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