WASHINGTON – Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue heads back to Capitol Hill this week, and he?s likely to face renewed challenges on the president?s budget and proposals to cut and reorganize rural development programs.
Perdue will testify Tuesday before the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, whose ranking Democrat, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, has joined the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, in sharply criticizing the rural development plans.
In a letter to Perdue on Friday, the senators pressed their concerns about Perdue?s plans to eliminate the undersecretary of rural development as well as the 30 percent cut in spending that President Trump proposed.
?While we appreciate your comments that rural development is a personal priority of yours, given the magnitude of these responsibilities, it is essential that the Senate retain its oversight obligations to review and confirm any nominee that would serve as the leader of the Rural Development mission area,? the senators wrote.
Trump?s budget would eliminate numerous popular programs across the RD mission area, including Business and Industry loans and the Value-Added Producer grants. Overall funding to support Rural Business-Cooperative Service programs would be slashed from $157 million to just $12 million in 2018.
While USDA?s workforce would be reduced by 5.5 percent, or 5,263 employees, under the budget, the RD staff would be slashed by nearly 20 percent, dropping from 4,825 to 3,900. Perdue argues that the reorganization would elevate the importance of RD programs because the assistant that he plans to appoint to oversee them would have walk-in privileges with him.
During a hearing before House appropriators on May 24, a day after the budget was released, Perdue appeared to back away on some of the proposals, affirming that crop insurance and other farm programs are ?extremely important.?
The budget would cut crop insurance by $29 billion over 10 years and eliminate the $1.7 billion Food for Peace program as well as two programs that many farm groups consider critical for developing export markets: the Market Access Program and the Foreign Market Development Cooperator Program.
Read more at Agri-Pulse.com.
