Transcripts For CSPAN3 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20240622

We want to keep using our military do go into the other countries, take a bill with us figure out what its going to cost and tell them that you pay half when we get there and half when the jobs done. We cant keep affording to go and police the world and some of the social programs like Social Security so easy to fix. When the kid comes out of the Social Security on year one, start taking taxes out. Dont wait 18 or 20 years. Take a little bit out of earned Income Credit and not miss it. It would fix Social Security and probably give a little bit of money there for health care that the whole country needs. Okay. Caller i think those are a couple of good things to start with. All right. John fortier the budget. We with respect taking positions like wars and entitlement. Those are functions for congress to address. I think if youre getting at the budget process, thats something we made recommendations about and the Bipartisan Policy Center has additional recommendations out of an economic commission. It really is not what it should be. One thing we recommend is really to move to a twoyear budget cycle and may seem like inside baseball and we spend a lot of time each year arguing trying to get through many appropriations bills, trying to get a budget passed and then start all over again next year and contentious and the deadlines are and with a twoyear cycle, more longterm planning and the ability to have oversight, more in the middle of this time so you werent always thinking about a oneyear plan. You could have two years and watch where the money was going over the two years. Not measured by the index and something we hope to see. John is next in pennsylvania, republican. Good morning. Caller yes. Good morning. Id like to just make a comment on my observation. I pay pretty close attention to what goes on in congress. And a couple years ago the postmaster general came there. The postoffice was losing a lot of money and congress regulates the post office but they dont fund it. So they called the postmaster general in and he suggests made some recommendations so the senate almost immediately got on this. The committee was susan collins, a republican and Joe Lieberman an independent. And they i watched that whole process through the committee and i thought, boy, this is just how my government is supposed to work. It seemed perfect. They had all kinds of amendments in the committees. Then it went to the house or to the full floor and they voted on it on all these amendments. I think close to a hundred. They passed it by i believe it was over 80 of the senate voted for this. And i thought, this is just working perfect. And it went to the house and that was the last you heard of it. Okay. Okay, john . Well, i think you point out a couple of things. One, there can be important relationships 0 of a Committee Chairman or chairwoman and the Ranking Member. Those are really essential members of committees that work very well. Have the good relationships and much of what a committees jurisdiction is is to oversee an area of government, to watch what the federal executive branch is doing or even outside agencies like the post office. So if you see a committee working well with both sides, leaders of both sides of the committee willing to do oversight, sure disagree on certain parts of legislation and what they want to do about it, but to spend the serious time overseeing you see a good result. Whether that always works in both houses you know again we believe that at the end of the day both houses have to take these things serely and that those differences are real and sometimes we might go to Conference Committee to resolve them. Those are thats part of the process and i do think you do see many me believes Joe Lieberman is not with us in congress anymore but good relationships between chairman and Ranking Members are extremely important for the functioning of this viewer on twitter said representatives and senators should have some qualification for the committee on which they serve. Too many ignorant of subjects they address. Don in pennsylvania, independent, what do you think . Caller good morning. I think what we need to do is look at the whole situation of gerrymandering in the country. The house has gerrymandered their seats. Here in erie they split a competitive district in half. They gave mike kelly the rep of western pennsylvania the whole western part of erie. They snaked it down towards pittsburgh and eastern half of the state to Republican Rep of state college, snakes way over the mountains to state college. And these districts have now become same thing in ohio. No republican has to worry about their district. Or democrat has to worry about their district. So theres no cooperation between the two. So how are you going to get things done . We have to eliminate the gerrymandering. Thats how i would do it to try to get competitive districts back so our government can work. Got it. Well, were here talking a little bit about congress but if you look back to the entire report of our commission on political reform we did take on several issues. One was Congress Electoral system and services and in our section on the electoral system, we did talk about redistricting and we had to get agreement of republicans and democrats on the commission and did feel some things to be done better in that regard. First, let me tell you, as a political scientists, i think these are important questions but Political Science tells you youre still not going to have districts competitive or everyone in the middle. Part of whats gone on in america is congress is left and right and people live together and concentrated, democrats live in democratic neighborhoods. Republicans live so the drawing of the lines wont fix all of that. We came up with a process that we thought was fair and several recommendations. One is that both party vs an investment in redistricting. Too often it is one party power and sticks it to the other party. And then secondly i know you mentioned geographic concerns. We try to putt some other limitations on the map drawing process by requiring districts to be drawn more according to county lines or natural geographic features rather than just these crazy districts that squiggle around. Thats not you know not easy to do but one thing it does is makes it possible impossible for people to be too key yative. Some of the districts are very, very creative and having little bit more limitation on the process, open process about how to redistrict we are for. We werent willing to go as some people say to go to california or arizona which have models which are more completely out of the political process. They have turned it over to citizens. They dont want the legislature or the parties involved. Our commission really believed that having both parties have a say in those maps made sense but we did agree with you in many ways redistricting the lines are part of the solution. Talking with john fortier the democracy project director for the bipart son policy center. The group put together recommendations to improve congress. Theyre now out with an index of how this 114th congress has done in the first six months. So were now turning to all of you to have you take part in the conversation, as well. What do you think . How do you improve congress . Pennsylvania, sharon is next, a republican. Caller hello and thank you, cspan, for taking my call. I think we could limit the terms that they run for. Like, two terms and that is it. I think most of these congressmen have been in office for 15 years 25 years. I mean they get too comfortable with the lobby. And to be honest, im really disgusted with congress. I dont think theyve done anything, anything in the eight years that this president has been in office. Its a continual fight. And its really frustrating to watch them every day. They absolutely do nothing. And i feel sorry for obama. Okay. Lets i mean, part of this point that you do in this index is for people to be able to have metrics to measure congress. She said theyve done nothing. How many bills have they passed . We dont actually measure that. Were too early to say. Theres a number out there. I dont know it. Were measuring more the proeszcess of getting through committee. There have been successes. Major deals on trade. A framework for debating iran even though the parties will disagree on that. We have seen changes in education. Elementary and secondary education act passing surprising people. We have seen a little bit more hope in this congress. If i turn to the question about term limits which the caller brought up, you know, i think here our commission debated this and we didnt we didnt share your concern for term limits. We were worry edied somewhat in the other direction. The court said you have to amend the constitution to limit the terms of members. That is hard to do. We have seen it in some state legislatures and one worry is you take away the expertise of members that they build up over a long period of time. Some would say, boy the system is corrupt and lobbyists are too in bed with members of the congress or legislature and what the research has shown is opposite. If you have members of Congress Brand new and dont know as much and experienced theyre much more subject to the influences of a few lobbying or a few interest who have their ear. We did not we didnt come down against it strongly but we certainly were not for term limits on the commission. We think having experience in the legislature is valuable in terms of getting things done. Citizen on twitter says this, congress always lags behind publics common sense awareness. Congressional outrage emerges suddenly after an event. Where were they . Stan in baltimore, democrat, you are next, good morning. Caller the previous caller has my complete opinion and i still believe that term limits would make a difference. Yes, it could be a small issue with inexperience, but everybody going to be inexperienced. And youve got people going in the congress and in the senate who have been there for 25 30 or more years. Thats ridiculous. I do not believe that the Founding Fathers that i hear these people talk about all the time wanted these people to make a career out of being a senator or congressman. There is no way that anybody could prove that to me. All right. Thats stan in baltimore. Eric is next, democrat in virginia. Hi. Caller hi. Term limits are a horrible idea. It is like telling a doctor to retire after 20 years of learning the trade. And people just dont understand how complex the legislative process is but you definitely need the expertise. Second, i think the most fundamental problem that i have observed in congress is particularly in the house. Its structured in such a way that you cant build consensus. So much power is vested in the majority that the minority has no incentive to cut deals or to reach compromise or consensus. Their objective has to be to get in power again because they have virtually no control. We have seen the senate headed in that direction, also, and skrult we have seen reduced. So i think its a structural problem with respect to how congress is arranged. John fortier. I think your analysis is good in a way and goes back to the very beginnings of our country and how we conceived of the igs tuitions. The house always thought of much mf of a majority institution. Elected every two years on short terms. React to public opinion. Could really change in one election. The senate has to change over several elections smaller body, often requires more consensus. Part of the frarmmers genius is two bodies, being in the moibt in the house is not a great experience because you are really subject much more to the whims of the majority who are able to pass things over your objection. But we do call for the committee process, a more open debate process on the floor the Conference Committees, thats all a place where the majority and minority could have more input. Within that framework, i dont think you ever see the house be quite the place that has the ability to debate or the role of the minority that the senate does but we think it could be improved in a legislative process of some minority input and we think we have seen some directions in that process. Thats a place where minority members can make their views heard. Lailany democrat. Good morning to you. Caller hi, good morning. Basically congress is just become a cash cow for people who lie to us around election time or whether its every two or six years. With the United States senate races or quite frankly whether its every four years for the presidency. I just dont understand how the American People can put up with this. This is just absolutely its just horrible. Horrible to fit in be subjected to the amount of gridlock that we the people dont belong dealing with. I mean its just horrible. And i i dont think theres any solution. I mean the constitutional amendment process is almost impossible. Its just people have given up really. They have given up. All right. Well take those sentiments. Congress is very unpopular. Your views is not uncommon. We have seen Approval Ratings as low as 9 or so. It is up a little bit from that now. I think congress suffers from the way its built, that it is not one voice. The president you may like the president s policies or not like the president s policies but the president speaks with one voice. The congress with many. It is difficult. The framers made it difficult to get minorities, different elections and two bodies and then the president s cignasignature to get something done. Thats not as easy as some countries with more of a single parliament where the executive is part of that. So i think thats part of the frustration. Given that, though i think that there are ways to work within that. Again, what we are calling for here is some process where all of those voices are better heard. Getting the voices of 100 senators and 435 representatives from 2 different parties that disagree on a lot of things to come to a common agreement is a hard thing. But some common sense measures how the process could work better would make the process better. I dont expect congress to jump way up in Approval Ratings but i do see some hope now and i see the process will allow the legislative process to go forward and never always be considered messier than the executive branch. Question for all of you, how would you improve congress . Doug in new york, what are your thoughts . Caller my thoughts would be to amend the constitution and have president obama serve a third term. And as far as this commission or this gentleman, im wondering about him having senator lott as a part of that commission when he is quite a divisive person. And was he convicted of some political shenanigans . Im not clear on that one. But i do wish that the constitution would be amended so that the president could serve a third term. Its the only chance we have as a nation. Okay. Im not sure what you were referring to coming the former senator trent lott. We did have members of both parties. We thought it was commission that this be broadly representative and your viewers may find some of the members were more conservative than they were or liberal than they were but that was the point really. We didnt want a commission of people that just agreed with each other but across the spectrum spectrum. The point of term limits for the president , we didnt take it up but i think its a good one. We put in a amendment to the constitution after Franklin Roosevelt won four terms thinking that was too much. Soopz you start a second term everyone knows that you cant run for a third term. And some of your power as president , power of persuasive, the power to come back and win another election is gone. So i our commission didnt take that on. I personally agree with you. I think its better to run for a third term or maybe even a fourth term and let the people decide. I think you would find very few people going that far. Running for three terms. We had for many years a tradition started by washington and jefferson that they would serve a couple of terms but they wouldnt go longer than that. I think that was a better situation than we are today where theres the tradition and there was no fixed rule to run again. The president really can amass more persuasive power if he may run again, may have to go to the people and congress will who also goes to the people has to deal with the president in a different way. Dry creek, west virginia, john, a republican, you are next, john. Caller yes. Thank you for taking my call. I think as a former schoolteacher, as a retired schoolteacher, we have taught our kids that compromise was the best way to get something mutually agreed upon. But we have a president now that demands everything his way and still instead of compromising. All right john. Ill leave it there. Well again the system that we have of a separation of powers is frustrating if for one of the players you feel is not willing to go along. And so for those who dont like what congress is doing or those who dont like the president its a messy, messy process. I do think that again forcing the players to have a more open debate that is in Congress Getting more input from across the aisle getting something before it gets to the president s desk will give it a greater chance of getting it done. May bring the president to the table, this president or another president. It is not the end all, be all answer, process. Theres still the strong feelings and strongly held convictions of the players in the various positions. But we do think that the president does play an Important Role here and for the president to come, we mentioned earlier on certain days to meet with congress, to spend more time in the legislative process and for the congress to have a more robust process would mitigate that problem a bit. New york, kyle, independent what are your thoughts . Caller yeah, hi. I think we have heard a lot of the same thoughts and frustrations and i think the people are concentrating on the actual election instead of the legislative process. I think thats right. I think one way we could take away the incumbents damage is to make it illegal to directly solicit campaign contributions. We could call it the grahamtrump bill. What do you think of that . Well you know, our commission did take up this issue of money and politics or Campaign Finance. We had a broadbased participation and some smaller agreement on the problems and the solution. We did not have a grand set of recommendations on Campaign Finance. One thing our members agreed on this was really true of republicans and democrats, members of congress are spending too much time raising money. Theres always a balance between how much time you spend legislating, homeland constituents and the need to run for election. Part is raising money. But our members thought that balance shifted too far. Now, as to what to do about it, some states in the legislatures will say that you can only raise money when the legislature is not in session, not wanting to make the connection of people passing laws and receiving campaign contributions. We didnt decide that. For or against. And we really didnt find a way to come to a solution because the parties i think have some different views of Campaign Finance reform whens the right way to go, but they felt it was a problem and finding a way to get members spending more time legislating and less time raising money and more time concentrated here in washington was important. All right. A couple of minutes left here. Monica in baltimore democrat good morning. Youre on the air. Caller good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Going back to what the guest speaker said, Campaign Finance, the elected officials spend time raising money and not surprised you didnt find a solution on that issue because they were elected with these corporations money and so why would they want to vote against or find a solution against the thing, the money thats putting them in power . You know . I think we need to look at Citizens United again and see, like, money is really corrupting our political system. It is impairing our ability to pass legislation. Even though we have all these voices, you know we have so many systems and checks and systems and thrown off by all of these other interests for Economic Development and okay. So, monocar, ill leave it there to squeeze in judy in new york, a democrat, good morning. Go ahead. Share your thoughts. Caller yes, good morning. Ill go down my list. No term limits. Up to the people to vote people out. Makes people lazy. We need to get rid of the republicans out of congress because theyre obstructing. We should be listening to elizabeth warrens speech i heard the other day. At net roots. It should be 51 votes in the senate. We need to change the way we do elections. Money should not be speech. That means somebody with a lot of money has more speech pan i do with very little money. You know what . Listen to the people. When 70 want gun control and let Different Things that theyre not listening to the people. Thats because of gerrymandering. Million more republicans i mean, democrats voted for in our last congress and yet the republicans had the majority. Thats just ridiculous. Okay. John fortier, what did you hear there . From your list, ill take the Campaign Finance question again. I think the caller illustrates different opinions on how to reform the system. Some would be and more on the left, public financing, money to campaign and not private sources or equalizing the amounts limiting the amounts to equal amounts of people to raise. I think certainly on the more republican and libertarian side you have some worries that maybe the limits are too low that we should have higher limit that is alaw people to go out and raise some disclosed amounts of money but at larger chunks and maybe not spend so much time raising as worried about raising lots and lots of 2,000 checks and less time with higher limits and the parties were stronger. We did worry you mentioned outside groups. That was a concern of our members. That the outside independent groups are spending a lot of money on campaigns. We didnt have a solution for that but i think both parties worried about this. We have to leave it there. John fortier direct of the democracy project. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Secretary of state john kerry and treasury secretary jack lew on capitol hill to testify about the iran nuclear agreement. Since the deal was announced last week, the focus of many republicans members of congress has been on whether inspections of facilities in iran within 24 hours would be enough to detect any nuclear activity. Some of them think the deal should include anywhere any time inspection access. The 60day clock for congress to review the accord began on monday. And the Senate Foreign Relations Committee holds the hearing live at 10 00 a. M. Here on cspan3. Considered underrated by many first lady historians, Caroline Harrison was an artist that took up china painting and establishing the china collection. She was interested in womens issues and helped raise funds for Johns Hopkins university on the condition it admit women and the first president general of the daughters of the American Revolution until she died in the white house from tuberculosis. Caroline harrison, this sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans original series first lady influence and image examining the public and private lives of the women that filled the position of first lady and the influence on the presidency. Sundays at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan3. A new epa rule gives federal Agencies Authority to protect some streams, wetdlands and tributaries under the clean water act. Until the rule, small bodies of water under state jurisdiction. Some farmers and Agricultural Operations say this could force them to obtain expensive federal permits or face stiff civil penalties. Up next the House Agriculture Committee with a hearing about the impact of agriculture secretary tom vilsack. This is two hours 15 minutes. Well good morning. This is a committee onhearing on the committee of agriculture. Rick . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Father i bow humbly before you thankful for every blessing of life, this country that you have given us and mindful of the great responsibility you charged with us. Just ask that everything thats said and done here be pleasing in your sight and ask that you help us to be civil in our discourse and discerning in our comments and dialogue, father. I just pray it all in jesse helms name amen. Thank you rick. I want to thank the secretary vilsack for coming to be with us this morning. He has a hard stop at 12 15. Hes got cabinet responsibilities to do. Mr. Secretary, thanks, very much for being here this morning. Be careful on your knee there on the table. Want to welcome him. I want to say at the start of this, he and his staff worked really hard to fulfill the multitude of Committee Requests for oversight information that we have flooded them with over the last seven months and appreciate their cooperation and efforts to do that and work with us our team on that. Congresss responsibility under the constitution and in house rules that each of the authorizing committees conduct oversight over the executive branch areas of their jurisdiction. The American People demand that we hold our government accountable for the responsible stewardship of the taxpayers dollars. Today as identified by the Inspector General and the Government Accountability office. Id like to say a few words about the ib spector fong. Served since 2002. The office works hard with audits and investigations each year aimed to make the department more efficient. The investigations snap cases ensure that those engaged in fraud do not prey on the most vulnerable. I want to thank Inspector General fong for working with the committee. Oversight is essential to deterring waste fraud and abuse. Government employees must remember each time they award a grant its the eess the taxpayers money theyre spending. We focused on the Farm Service Program and the office of advocacy and outreach grants and cooperative agreements awarded 2010 and 2011. Fsa intended to the program to modernize to farmers and ranchers. Unfortunately, mismanaged as evidenced by the fact of 140 million over budget and 2 of the 5 planned core functions. July of 2014 mr. Secretary, you signed a memorandum seeking develop on midas. We agree with that that makes sense. This maintenance of midas alone is costly. Today we expect to hear about the path forward on the delivery of programs. I. T. Management across government deemed a high risk area by gao. The committee wants to see the department of agriculture implement the identified best practices and hold the responsible parties accountable. This committee will continue to monitor the work of both the u. S. D. A. Chief Information Officer and discuss today as i mentioned the office of advocacy and outreach, the award of grants an agreements under that program between 2010 and 2011 and that office under the direction of then assistant director of management awarded approximately 40 million in grants and cooperative agreements on a noncompetitive basis. And essence, mr. Secretary, gave taxpayers dollars away and this is alarming. I know it is to you as well. Those responsible be held cantible. I agree. Look forward to visit with you this morning about the expectation of that recommendation. Based on the public outcry of the scandal of taxpayers dollars, the American People want you to hold responsible those individuals violates that trust. We mr. Secretary, thank you and your staff again. Thank you for being here and i yield to the Ranking Member for any opening comments he has to make. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Welcome, mr. Secretary. Back to the ag committee. Appreciate you being here. Oversight is a responsibility of Committee Takes very seriously. Having an open dialogue is open not just so operating in the best interest of the constituents but implementing programs as congress intended. A few areas that we are specifically looking at today include the operations of office of outreach and advocacy creating by the 2008 farm bill. Awarding Strike Force Initiative and section 2501 grants and 2010 and 2011 and the Farmer Initiative and the long delayed development of midas the fsa commuter system jaup grade. Since the secretary joining us today i wouldnt be surprised if members use this opportunity to address others may be happening in the district such as the aifian flu situation which is impacted many of my poultry producers and others across the region. I have appreciated the departments efforts in this regard. Thus far, they have been doing a good job and im looking forward to an update on the future plans within the department their response if we have another outbreak occurring this fall. Again, mr. Chairman, i thank you for holding todays hearing. U. S. D. A. Has a Large Department which can make adequate oversight a Different Task and i think we all want the department to be running effectively and efficiently as possible and the secretary has a big job and we had a discussion yesterday and he was telling me that they do 7. 5 billion transactions a year in the department. Am i right about that . Thats a pretty astounding. So bound to have a couple glitches here and there. Thank you. I yield back. Thank the gentleman. Chairman, excuse me, secretary vilsack, thank you again for being here. The microphone is yours sir. Mr. Secretary mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and to the Ranking Member, as well. Given the interest of time and the number of members who are going to participate in this committee meeting, mr. Chairman, i wander if i could defer my opening and perhaps maybe use a bit of my time that im saving to extend an answer if that becomes necessary so that everyone gets a chance to ask the questions they need to ask. Well thank you mr. Secretary. I appreciate that. Thousands and thousands of great employees at your department get up every single day, go to work, try to do the very best they can for the taxpayers, beneficiaries they serve but the actions of a few taint everybody and so the conversation this morning will be about those few opposed to being able to brag on all the rest of folk who is do a good job and every organizations got the few bad apples we have got to understand what happens to them and the deterrence factor and the fact that things should happen to folks who do breach the public trust so lets talk a little bit about pearly reed. I believe an undersecretary in charge of spending a lot of money. The special agent that is conducted that investigation discovered in addition to the 40 million in grants appear to have been granted without competition, that mr. Reed also was able to direct either by himself or through some other folks a relatively significant amount of money, 275,000 plus to an individual in which he had a fiscal relationship with. Mr. Reed resigned i guess 2012. Did you ask for his rezsignation or did he do that on his own . Mr. Chairman i became aware of concerns about mr. Reeds handling of the incidents and the account that is youve just addressed by virtue of hotline tip that we received. Based on that tip, i asked immediately for the oig to investigate. The oig produced whats called a fast report indicating some reports they had. Not a compromise report. I indicated to him we were disappointed in what we had initially learned about this. And following that conversation, mr. Reed left the employment of the u. S. D. A. I thank you. I believe that the overall investigation led to a recommendation by the agency to refer to justice department. Can you visit with us about that and why if you know justice chose not to pursue criminal actions . Mr. Chairman, following mr. Reed leaving the office then the oig continued its review of activities involving 2501 an strike force involving mr. Reed. And they took a good deal of time obviously to complete the report. When the report was completed we basically requested the department of justice of to take a look at this. I believe it was referred down to the department of justice down in arkansas and the u. S. Attorney in arkansas chose not to prosecute. I cant share with you today because i dont know the specific reasons for why he chose not to prosecute. But that decision makes it difficult if not impossible for us to take any further with reference to mr. Reed because of the code of federal regulations, specifically 180. 2. 110 that basically outlines processes that we could take if there is a criminal judgment or civil judgment. Obviously, there is beneather in this case. And so as a result, we are where we are today. We focused our attention frankly, mr. Chairman, after we received the fast report and after we received the full report on fulfilling the recommendations that oig outlined in terms of improvements to the programs and i can tell you today theyre fundamentally different than they were in 2010, 2011. All right. Those processes, could this individual be whens the phrase . Suspension or disbarment so that i understand under the Bush Administration he was a consultant to the government. Can he be prevented from coming under a contract . Under the code of conduct i cited, there has to be a criminal judgment or a civil judgment. And in other words, a court of law has to make a determination that something inappropriate occurred. And based on that judgment and determination, youre then empowered under the code of federal regulations to stake steps. We dont have that in this particular circumstance. Okay. Mr. Reed, to be fair to mr. Reed, he did serve the nrcs in a capacity for a number of years at the federal government before coming back as the assistant secretary of administration and the reason i asked him to do that in 2009 was because or department had a very serious problem with civil rights which we wanted to address. I believe you mentioned this came to our attention on a hotline tip, a whistleblower tip. Can you walk us through that attitude toward the whistleblowers . Well, obviously we encourage folk who is are seeing activity that is inappropriate to notify us notify their supervisor notify people in charge of concerns that they may have. Thats why we have the hotline process to be able to do that in a way that doesnt necessarily compromise your ability and your relationship with other coworkers. And we take these things very seriously. By virtue of the fact when that hotline tip occurred, my it came to my attention immediately and first action was to ask the Inspector General to look into it. We are not i have said to my folks, im not concerned about people making mistakes. But i want to know what they are and i want to be able to fix them if theres a problem i want to know what it is and i want to know it as soon as i can. Because we are very interested in the job that we have and i take very seriously what you said at the outset which is that we have a responsibility to taxpayers to make sure that the resources are spent appropriately and unfortunate and disappointing when that doesnt occur. Thank you, mr. Secretary. Ranking member, five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. You know back in when i was chairman, i had meetings with some of your computer people. I thought at the time, you know, they brought in a couple new people, that they were on track to get this thing straightened out. You know in but they were having funding challenges. And, you know, as i understand, i think that theres been an uneven kind of deal going on with the funding of that. Is that how much of that uneven funding and not being able to plan had to do with the problems that happened there in the midas situation . Well, congressman i would you know, i was reading the good gook the other day and in proverbs theres a couple suggestions a wise man measures his steps and has many counselor counselors. With reference to midas, we didnt measure our steps and didnt have as many counselors as we needed frankly. Starting in 2007 2008, i think the vision was pretty grand. I dont think people fully appreciated the difficulty of basically implementing that in the context of a 1980s system which is basically what we have. This is a huge understood taking. 11 million customers. 5 million farmers. 8. 1 million farms and 38 million tracks of land. So its a huge undertaking. And frankly, we didnt have at the outset what we have today which is a process of review and many, many hands and many eyes basically watching this. And doing this in an incremental way. So budgeting was an issue. Thes no question about that but also the way in which it was originally structured and the way in which we failed to recognize that there was a different vision in kansas city where some of this work was going to be done and a different vision in d. C. And as a result of that conflict things didnt get set up as they should have. We have made progress and we do have some benefit from midas today. A farmer can walk into an fsa office today in any county in the country and facilitate and see all of the records regardless of where that land might be located. That was not the case before. We also have installed our Business Integrity efforts which will allow us to reduce errors and mistakes and we are now working collaborateively on the greatway program to take the next step to allow folks to do to the work at home they want to do. Progress has been made. But it clearly wasnt implemented in the way that i think people envisioned at the beginning. And we have addressed those issues by establishing a process within the cios office for review, a more functioning eboard. And weekly and now biweekly reports to me directly about the status of midas, about the status of the Gateway Program and about the status of accuracy, the next step. Have we gotten rid of the 400s and the system 36s . Are they gone . Well i dont think that i dont think that theyre totally gone and thats one of the complications. It is essentially we have sort of meshed and merged systems. Which may explain why were going to have to continue from time to time to patch and put resources into the system. This gets back to this different vision and different focus between the folks in kansas city and the folks in d. C. Right. Which we have addressed. Thank you. As you know, first of all, i want to thank you and the department abe the work of dr. Cliff tord did and done and continued to do helping us with our aifian influenza situation and hits my district probably harder than anybody and theres concerns out there and i think you have been pretty good addressing those as they come along. Wasnt a perfect situation but in a crisis its not going to be perfect. But one of the concerns im hearing now is these inconsistencies in payment indemnity payments that you know we appreciate what youre doing and i think you have been doing it out of the ccc and omb supporting you and seems to be working. But apparently there are different indemnity payments for high path aifian versus low path aifian influenza and i guess its low path in virginia i guess. So, and under the regulations apparently egg layers are compensated for future egg production according to the low path regulations but the high path regulations are silent. In that aspect. And so the turkey folks, you know, are wondering you know, why theyre not compensated and for what would be the full cost of the bird kind of similar to what is happening with the egg production under the low path and so are you looking at that . Is there a way to bring consistency to that situation . Well the quick answer is we are looking at it. We recognize that there is a difference between low path and high path and there ought not to be. We also are taking a look at whether or not we could create some kind of more uniform system based on the size of the operation in terms of cleaning and upkeep expense as well, because theres obviously some confusion of who gets paid to do what relative to disinfection and cleaning. This is a process that i think we are looking at and we are hopeful that we get this thing in a better place and a more consistent place before the fall and why we have set up a task force i instructed be set up for ways to be better prepared in the fall. Thank you. And again thank you and the department for the work that you have done. Yield back. Mr. Lucas for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman and mr. Secretary, i have to echo the comments of chairman and the Ranking Member about the challenges you and the department faced in implementing a rather dramatic change. Really, i think in most areas it is quite fundamentally amazing how successful thats been but like anything i have a few questions, mr. Secretary in a number of areas. One of the things im curious about 100 million provided for the implementation of title i to be cruised for filling staff positions due to the increased work of ark and plc. How much of that money was used . And if you could, perhaps in a followup if necessary, but provide the committee with a written break down of how that money was spent. Can you touch on that, mr. Secretary . I can youre a county office folks worked diligently. They face some challenges throughout. There are so many chairs and former chairs of then committee im probably going to exactly. Congressman, we are using this resource in a planned and strategic way. The 100 million. We didnt use it all at once. We have been basically ramping up as work requirements are required and facilitated. I cant tell you today the exact amount that has been allocated but staff and temporary staff have been hired in offices and that we are in the process of trying to determine where best to locate additional staff based on workloads. We will provide you with a breakdown as you have asked in terms of where the money is spent and what we have purchased with it as soon as this hearing is over. I very much appreciate that, secretary. One of the things i and a number of members of this committee promised the folks in the field going through the challenges of implementing this is theres help and we attempted in the farm bill and normally staff funding issues are handled not by the authorizing committee. I would point out that overall u. S. D. A. Staff down by 15,000 ftes and fsa is and Rural Development hit with those reductions. Absolutely. And just shows how much more effort the folks in the field are shouldering. I have also visited with you and a number of other officials about a slightly different area. The way in which it appears that u. S. D. A. Implementing a Prime Minister of net effect of penalty penalizing growers with cover crops particularly in 14 and 15 crop cycles. The question i keep getting from them is why cant youve have used thedy dyiscretion to be the concern we have is the way in which the statute or bill crafted in terms of flexibility that we have or dont have. Be happy to continue to work with you on this. We are encouraging cover Crop Production. We have seen a 350 increase in cover crop. We understand the importance of it. I think there may be a concern of whether or not we have the Legal Authority to do what youre asking us to do. If you have an interesting way for us to get around that, wed be more than happy to hear it. Thank you. One last question. I assume probably my colleagues will have some questions about the accuracy program, arcsi. And 2014 farm bill u. S. D. A. Instructed to inform the committee reaching substantial completion. The arcsi program and the report to the committee in july indicates that the programs a pilot in place in about 30 counties. Illinois and iowa. Thats an interesting substantial completion report. You see the perspective that i offer up. Well, the reason for this, congressman, is that we learned lessons from the initial imple meation of midas which is that we instituted the whole program or tried to institute the whole program and found that we had seriouses glitches and unintended processes through the computer process and decided to stage implementation to work out the bugs in advance before we create basically havoc and concern on the countryside. The states were chosen in part because folks volunteered. Were willing to participate. They were also chosen in part because of the bulk of work thats done in corn and soybean production. No disrespect to the good folks of oklahoma but congressman king has a lot of power in this committee. He has a lot of influence everywhere. Mr. Secretary, thank you for the efforts of implementing and a few things that need to be done and im sure together well get it back. Mr. Walz for five minutes . Tim . Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being. I want to echo my thoughts to you and your folks on the Avian Influenza influenza. It came hard, hot, it was big and to try to handle on it. Maybe mr. Peterson hit on this a little bit. Im curious. This was really labor intensive. Takes a lot of people to do this. And my twopart question is making sure you have the resources moving forward on this and some of the suggestions coming out of the industry is that you have a kind of a First Responder team thats ready to drop and spin people up quicker 0 when this comes again and i think unfortunately that will be the case are we ready for it . Just those two parts. Avis employment is down by 8,000 folks and had to hire 3,200 people to supplement the work. 21 states impacted. What we have learned is we need a command and communication structure organized and in place as quickly as possible. A structure that reflects the need for regional communication, a structure that involves state communication and a structure that involves county by county communication. So we are as part of our planning process for the fall we are looking at ways in which we can essentially identify assets and increase the number of incident command teams that would be available to go once this thing hits. We are planning for a circumstance where were simultaneously having to deal with 500 joutd breaks. We think thats sort of a worstcase scenario situation and planning for that. We have had a meeting a workshop last week. We have a meeting scheduled in iowa next week. With the industry to continue to listen and to learn. Great. And i think we are, you know, we understand there are issues involving bio security. There are issues involved depopulation. There are issues involving disposal. There are issues involving indemnification. And the time for repopulation. These are all issues we want to learn and try to be in a better position. We also want to make sure that we preposition and have as much work done as possible in terms of disposal sites. We ran into issues on local officials of landfills and could crop up and where it hasnt, i trying to identify landfills. Work with local and state officials to get them prepared for this if it occurs to streamline the process and dont have the delay we have experienced in some other states. Im certainly glad to hear that and please take back to your folks that from the folks in the industry and on the ground and appreciative of your work and to mr. Peterson and king who have been leading on making sure we get this right an preparing for the future. Question on beginning farming rancher. Mr. Fortenberry myself and authored that on this side and much of the ideas came from things that you had done, mr. Secretary. Told us to build for the capacity for the future. The oig came out with things on that and most troubling to me is i have never questioned your commitment to this program. You have made it very clear but the oig said officials didnt understand it was a priority and troubles me in terms of implementation and tracking and how many people getting involved. I believe in this program. I know you you believe in it. Where are we moving forward to make sure they get it and you have made it a priority . As a result of that result and the concern of beginning farmers and ramplers did deputy secretary is tasked with putting together a major effort to do better outreach, a a better outreach and communication within and outside of usda. Hes done round tables and visits with a variety of Interest Groups and were working more collaboratively in a more integrated fashion than we did before and calling upon our land grant universities to help and assist us. A recent example is florida a m where we basically shut down an ars lab, and a substantial amount of land became available and one of the requirement was for them to use it as a beginning farmer and rancher hub, use the land to basically make it easier for beginning farmers and ranchers. Were working with the defense department. We noticed there are folks leaving the military interested in potentially get foog farm getting into farming. The military didnt allow information about our programs when folks leave they are given information, were now going to make sure that all of our information is available at each one of the bases and making football presentations to financial physical presentations to military personnel so it is a better place than it was six months a year ago. Thank you. I yield back. Secretary vilsack a couple of quick things. Mr. Peterson mentioned issues with regard to the turkey farmers, obviously in georgia we have a tremendous amount of poultry farmers and i guess one of the concerns that is expressed to us is that in most cases the farmers dont own the chickens and so would there be a product for the growers to take advantage of if the there isnt an insurance program. That was proposed in the 2014 farm bill but because of budget concerns it was not put in the farm bill. I would strongly urge the congress as it begins the process of considering future farm bills to look for a way in which that issue can be addressed. Because youve pointed an in equity in the situation. Weve paid out nearly 600,000 checks to livestock producers for a variety of disasters theyve experienced and right friday so it feels different for the poultry producers because it is. So there is unfortunately not an insurance program. Were looking at waying in which ways to look at this indemnification process through ccc that could potentially be based on a per square foot basis on those who own the facility but not the chickens. Were looking at a variety of programs but there is not a way today. I would appreciate it if you keep us informed. That is a big deal for georgia and the cover crops that the former chairman mentioned. I want to talk a little bit about the Natural Resources Conservation Services and the wet lapd identification process if we could. Last week they announced a new wet land identification process for the prairie pothole region. Can you explain how that is different from the current process . Part of what were attempting to do is to have a quicker determination than in the past. Weve had some a serious issue with backlog of activities particularly in the dakotas where this is an issue and were trying to find a process to stream line the process so we can get information to folks quicker and simpler and easier. I can provide more detail to you and your office on that congressman. Wed be glad to do that after this hearing. Thank you. I guess one of our primary concerns is with the epa and the u. S. And the those rules and you say that coupled with potential changes in the process this is not connected in relationship to waters of the u. S. This is this is basically an understanding that there are a couple of areas in this country that have unique geographic challenges relative to conservation and we want to respond to those challenges appropriately. But it is a wetland in the identification process . Yes. Can you discuss the role of the Climate Change Program Office the ccpo, how does that interact with the other usda agencies and what are their current activities . I hope i understand your question. Within usda we have a focus on climate and we have a series of climate hubs that are regionally placed. Their responsibility is primarily to assess the vulnerabilities to changing climate and weather ability and provide series of new techniques and strategies for allowing producers in each region of the country to adapt to a mitigating changing climate. They are in the process of issuing those sections. The northwest has completed the assessment assessment. And doing additional out reach to the producers have the latest information. We have a series of Technology Tools that producers can use to allow them to better analyze what they need to do. And i think it is designed to allow us to continue to work with producers to reduce Greenhouse Gases linked to agriculture. There are ways in which we can help producers do that and help the bottom line. And finally, it is a complement to precision agriculture that is taking over production agriculture, each acre of land is different and we want folks to know what to do on each acre relative to inputs. Thank you for your testimony. And the cover crops issue and the issue for the poultry farmers is important to us and i hope youll continue to work on that. Time has expired. Mrs. Fudge for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman and thank you mr. Secretary for being here today. Mr. Secretary, last week this Committee Heard from 1890 land grant institutions on a number of issues including state matching on extension and research grants. We heard from a number of them they are not getting the funding for which they are eligible because the states are failing to meet the one to one match requirement. In fact, according to an aplu report from 20102012, 61 of 1890 land grant institutions did not receive 100 of the oneonone matching funds from their respective states for extension and research funding. This lack of state matching funds resulted in a loss of 57 million to 1890s. What actions is usda taking to address this . The first thing were doing congresswoman is trying to make sure people understand precisely what is and isnt the rule relative to matching and what power the usda has in potentially waiving the matching requirement. The 50 match requirement i think that the misunderstanding is that it has to come from the state. It doesnt have to come from the state. It can come from other sources and i think that is part of what we need to get information out to the 1890s to make sure they understand there are other options relative to the matching requirements and then on casebycase basis to determine whether or not a waiver is appropriate, which we do from time to time. So i think if people understood there is a multitude of ways in which that match can be reached, then that might aleve some of the concerns and open up some of the Additional Resources. The only thing were attempting to do is we asked the 1890s to put together in light of the 125th anniversary of the act creating them what do they see in the future. They came back with a set of recommendations relative to the department of centers which would integrate and allow the 1890s to work collaboratively together. Weve been supportive and put resources together to help create the centers so there is good positive activity taking place. Good. Because one of the things that i wanted to say to you is that i have to thank my colleagues mr. Davis and just recent my mr. Scott for wanting to work with us on assisting you in making sure that these inequities are flushed out so you will be hearing from us. My second question is about hffi. You know it was authorized as part of the farm bill to build off existing efforts and to allow for communities across the country to improve healthy food access and foster food economies and foster public health. Recognizing the uncertainty of appropriates for hcci in fy 16, please give us an update on how you plan to implement it. I want to make sure i understand the question. There are two efforts under way in terms of providing access and information for local and regional food systems to meet people in need. One is an ongoing effort under the healthy finance in Food Insecurity initiative, 100 million and roughly 30 million has been directed to a variety of projects around the country. So that is implemented and it will be over the next couple of years. And the second issue is whether we can provide development for funding of Grocery Stores and what not. That is less successful in getting appropriation generally from congress but we continue to work with our local and regional foods, our Farmers Market and programs to try to provide assistance and help. Good. Because the stores is a big issue in food deserts so i appreciate that. I have no other questions. If there is Something Else you would like to add, i have about a minute left. You are free to use it. Well, i would say it is appropriate, the 125th anniversary of the 1890s, to focus on the fact they have tremendous opportunity. And one of the things were doing with the 1890s is in collaboration with them is ag business is coming to us expressing concerns about the diversity of the work force so the deputy secretary is working with major businesses to create some kind of job fair or work fair to introduce those businesses to some of the broigt students bright students of the 1890s so there is activity to go on to connect folks in the ag business as well. Thank you, i yield back. Mr. Crawford for five minutes. Mr. Secretary, i appreciate you being here today. I have concerned about the actively engaged rules and know the Department Released draft rules on the implementation of those provisions in the 2014 farm bill. Setting limits on the number of managers allowed per farm, was at your discretion and i have concerns that will be unnecessarily penalized by this. How did you usda arrive at this number of allowed managers and can you be sure that farms are complex or with legitimate business interests held by many individuals are not negatively impacted. Congressman, good question. This was designed to respond to the concerns expressed about folks who were not farmers who werent connected to the land receiving the assistance and benefits. So we tasked the team to take a look at and i would point out in crafting the Farm Bill Congress basically ensured we walk down a fairly narrow lane here. Roughly 9090 of the people who farm are not impacted by what we are talking about here. This is limited partnerships it doesnt affect corporations or family farming operations so it is a very limited universe of folks who could potentially be impacted and the universe that created the concern to begin with with folks in manhattan and highrises getting being on a Conference Call and getting subsidies. So to task to the team to try to close that loophole. And then recognizing that closing the loophole would be helped by having a bright line. How many people does it actually take. And how do you determine . So you start with the proposition there ought to be one manager but you recognize in the south there are operations large in size that require more than one person so we created an option for the large operations to be able to make the case for additional managers up to two additional managers and created some framework and some bright lines that will allow people to understand precisely how they could fall and how they couldnt qualify for those additional managers. So there is a default of one manager, one set of subsidies, but if you can prove that you have a complex and significantly large operation you can basically go to two or three additional one or two additional managers for a total of three. But again, it impacts a very very narrow framework, it does not impact family farming operations or corporations because of the law. Okay. I appreciate the bright line. I think that would be very helpful if that bright line were as bright as possible to help lay any kind of any concerns that particularly as you mentioned in the Southern Region where we have economies to scale to a large degree. You mentioned in your testimony that midas is being used to manage records for 11 million fsa customers and can you tell us if others have access to the records for the work they are doing for producers . We are working with the nrcs and the quick answer to your question is yes. But it actually works the other way in which fsa is working with the nrcs to utilize the gateway that nrcs has developed to allow for the producer to access records and look at contracts, to look at payment history et cetera, from their home as opposed to going to an office which was the case before. We obviously want to piggy back the fsa aspect to provide that same kind of flexibility in the future so well be using and trying to figure out how to merge the efforts so we provide greater convenience to customers and producers. I want to jump into the acrsi accuracy acreage crop reporter and streamline initiative and it listed a number of key outstanding efforts that havent been completed yet and i understand they are complex systems with large amounts of data but what can you tell us on how those integrating systems across fsa is being addressed and what is the time line for completion. The next big step in the process is this summer where well be basically taking a look at whether or not which contractor or provider can provide us the best opportunity to take the next step based on the pilots that have been taking place in illinois and iowa which have been extended. Were learning lessons and were going to be determining how to best interest grate this system integrate this system on top of midas investment so this summer well be making that determination review and from that point on well begin to ramp up the number of people involved in the system to eventually get to a nationwide effort. I would like to be able to tell you a specific date. The problem is i dont know what problems are going to crop up in that ramp up process and i think this is a much better way to do it in the past so it may take longner the front end but have less convenience in the back end. Were going to work on this in a thoughtful and systematic way which is making progress as we go along. Were not delaying this, we want to do it right. Thank you mr. Secretary. Time has expired. Miss kirkpatrick for five minutes. Nice to see you mr. Secretary, thank you. Im going to ask you about two projects in my district that you are involved in that are important to the Economic Development. The first is forefrye. Campbell global has left the project and i would like to know what effect that has had on the frothect of four fry and why does the progress stand today . Well, the record of decision for the Forest Service was signed in april of this year. This decision covered a million acres and including 430,000 acres of mechanically treated and prescribed burn area. The steward contract was issued. It is a good earth power. They have 19 task forders covering 32,000 acres and 4200 acres has been harvested. The chief visited the for fry area and understands it is a priority for you and it is a priority for us because it is essentially the way of the future and we have been using for fry as an example of better collaboration in other parts of the country to get folks to understand how to stream line this process. Were going to continue to work with diverse Interest Groups to make sure this is implemented is there a plan b. In case planet earth cant fulfill the task orders. In other words will other contracts be let what needs to be cleared . There are other forests within for fri being prepared. Let me check on what plan b. Is. I dont know what plan b. Is because we are hopeful that plan a. Works but if it doesnt well look for additional contractors interested and able to do the work. This is part of the challenge they want more timber harvested and this administration has harvested more timber and we continue to ramp up the number of board feet we are treating but it requires resources and i dont want to get into Fire Suppression but that is a problem in terms of budgeting. I appreciate your interest in the project. You came out to arizona and looked at our forests and it is a model for a collaborate effort in bringing back the timber industry. My second question is about the Apache Railroad. It is a critical asset for Navajo County in snowflake, in my district the road provides good jobs and it is important to my pork producers, the tim per and pot ash mining. Can you tell me what the status is of the little Colorado Water conservation district application for a Community Facilities loan for the purchase of the Apache Railroad . What i can tell you congresswoman is we need your help. We need your help to encourage folks to complete the application and to provide us a full and complete application. What was submitted was incomplete. Weve notified them of that fact and were waiting a response to our request for additional information. Okay. So anything you can do to help us get that additional information. Well do that. Time is of the essence and it is an important project and well certainly work with your office. Thank you mr. Chairman. I yield back. Yields back. Mr. Desjarlais for five minutes. Secretary i know no trip to the ag committee will be complete without a discussion of live black vultures. We continue to have problems in tennessee and charlie horde brought this to our attention from a tennessee cattleman and i think we talked about this now two or three times. There is a provision in the Farm Bill Livestock Indemnity Program where producers are eligible for compensation for losses against protected species like vultures but what has been happening is that after they have the losses, the Farm Service Agencies are telling farmers they need someone from federal agencies to come out and verify the losses. However avis is telling farmers that they are not able to go verify the losses so there appears to be a miscommunication and i wanted to make you aware that were still having problems with that. Do you know of any action taken to address that. Congress, the honest answer is i dont but it seems that you asking the question will prompt me to go back to the office and figure out if there is a third way to get this done. I understand avis is strapped and that may be the reason. But that is not a particular good reason for your producer so let me see what we can do. One suggestion has been made the state Extension Services be able to do that or veterinarians ser the losses is that something we could entertain. That is a good point. And it is something we try to impress upon our folks at usda, that if you cant get the job done for whatever good reason, good valid reason exists then the next best thing is to figure out a way in which somebody else could do it and we obviously havent done as good of a job in this particular circumstance as we could. Well work on it. And touch one other thing and farmers and ranchers have voiced concerns about submitting the application and it takes too long to deal with the problem. The only method for submitting a application which is via the mail, snail mail and some of the claims processes take four to six weeks and cattle season is over and maybe we could look at a more efficient permitting process, perhaps something online and perhaps something more than a year. We have a process improvement effort at usda where i have tasked every missionary to identify two process improvement projects they work on to reduce time to convenience to producers and we have success and saved over 100,000 hours but this sounds like a good idea to suggest this could be a process initiative. And my office is willing to do the leg work. If you could have someone follow up with our office on this issue we would be happy to work with you and get it resolved and thank you for indulging me for the third time on this issue. I apologize you had to bring it up a third time. I yield back. Miss graham for five minutes. Thank you. Thank you mr. Secretary, it is good to see you. Appreciate you being in my district for florida a ms commencement last may. Wonderfully received and much appreciated appreciated. While you were there you had an opportunity to go to gas den county and you met with farmers and local area leaders. During that time there, you spoke about the ways that the department of agriculture can assist in lowincome highpoverty Rural Communities and mentioned the 1890s ag business partnerships and im curious if that is what you were referring to during that time or if you could elaborate on that. Congresswoman appreciate the question. It is part but not by any means all we are trying to do. And with your permission and the chairs permission im going to elaborate on this just a bit. When i came into office the first suggestion made to me was there were literally tens of thousands of claims against discrimination in the past and there was an effort to make sure that didnt reoccur. And one of the things that we noticed is we werent getting information, we werent getting programs instituted in high poverty areas and part of the reason for that is sometimes the areas dont have the sophistication and the Technical Assistance to allow them to compete successfully for a competitive Grant Programs so that was the genesis for putting strike force together. There were issues concerning the implementation early in the beginning of strike force but we have essentially significantly changed that program so now it is an integrated effort between the programs going down into a county area like the one you mentioned and asking the questions, what can we do, what do you need and trying to figure out collaboratively in a way to make sure that it happens. To date, were now in 21 states. Over 800 counties 880 counties i believe. We have 1,000 local partners looking to drive the effort and as a result weve invested 16 billion in 129,000 different projects. It could be a home loan a Business Loan a conservation project, a nutrition effort. What we were talking about there was to figure out ways to use the agricultural base in a more creative and value added way in that country as part of an effort to address Child Poverty because you cant do that unless you have decent jobs and unless you use your Natural Resources in the most effective way and we are trying to figure out how to do that and we have a great partner in florida a m. We have given them a substantial amount of land that could be used in a beginning farmer effort and in Crop Production that could occur with a walmart, with and frankly that is what happened in georgia. We have 80 africanamerican farmers selling collared greens to walmart that has developed a successful coop. That is what we would like to do more of but it takes time and commitment and focused effort. Well, i think youll find the people in gas den county are ready to work hand in hand with you anything you can do and my team can do to help in the partnership, we stand ready to do. And weve taken the additional step of asking other federal agencies to work with us and that is why the president developed the Child Poverty initiative that in which well be looking at a variety of factors involving Child Poverty and well be selecting 20 areas within the country to sort of focus on a two zwreneration generation approach for child pofrry, not just programs for kids or mom and dad but for the family and in collaboratively and concert and we think there is an opportunity there to make a dent in the Child Poverty rate in rural areas which is unfortunately too, too high. Well thank you very much and again look forward to working hand in hand with department of agriculture in this project and thank you for your commitment to helping work on Child Poverty. It is certainly a significant issue not only in gas den county but across our country. I appreciate that and i yield back the bbs of my time. Mr. Yoho for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. Mr. Sillvilsack, good to see you again. I want to go back to the midas issue. It was initiated under president bush and in 2009 when this came together. When it was bid out, was that a competitive bid on that i. T. Program . I dont want to mislead you. Im not sure. I would be surprised if that werent a competitive bid but i can check on that. I looked at that because when i looked at the strike force, the language in here says that it looked like those were given out without a competitive give and that raised the question on midas. And then when i read through this, it just talks about the inefficiency in the over sight of the fsa office watching this and it said fsa has obligated over 444 million on the project as of 2015 but has not modernized the farm programs and you only have two applications. And is that Program Worth continuing or is that Program Ended to not put good money on top of bad and go to Something Else . Well what we did first of all, i wont suggest this was done in an effective way because obviously it wasnt. But i think it started off with a grand vision and a Implementation Plan that didnt understand and appreciate how difficult it was going to be to overlay all of this on top of a 1980 system. There was this disconnect between the folks in kansas city who do our i. T. Stuff and the folks in d. C. Who do our i. T. Stuff. They werent communicating effectively and we didnt have enough oversight. All of that has been changed. For the future, i hope it is. Because if it was a 1980 system they started with and it was 2009 when things were starting to be implemented, you would have thought they would have projected ahead on the new technology that will come out. That that relates to the fact that there are 2100 offices and people in those offices that are pretty comfortable with one system. And none of that was really particularly well thought out. So what i did, once i became fully aware of the problems i said were going to stop midas were going to start looking at this thing incrementally and so we did the first effort to make sure that folks could access their records no matter where they are and that is a big opportunity and savings of staff and that is implemented. And then the Business Integrity to reduce the errors and now were working on the questions drk working to allow producers to work from homes. That proprocess is in play and hopefully over the course of the next months or so well see progress on that. So there is work being done. So i dont think we want to say we should stop the program. We want to make it more convenient. It said it only has a life span of 2021 and i have two other questions so im going to move on. The fsa continues to pay the contractor as of app 2015, 215 million in taxpayer dollars were obligated and fsa paid the contractor over 108 million. Isnt there a way to stop that. If you have a inefficient contractor one that is inept, can you stop a program in the future and i have something i have to ask you about citrus . The answer is yes and that is why we are looking at a more intensive process to determine whether or not contractors have worked on this in the past should continue or whether we should bring new people in and of course that has caused some interesting concern. Well i would like to work with you on that. And then just talking about the citrus in florida, as you know, the Citrus Greening and i appreciate the help youve given us. In florida we had a high of over 300 million boxes of oranges that accounted for 4. 5 billion in revenue and weve seen that drop steadily and rapidly due specifically to Citrus Greening. Is there anything being held up in that program or that needs to be ex peddited so we just talked with the ag commissioner yesterday and in florida weve gone from 300 million boxes then down to 200 and this years crop looks like under 100 million boxes and it is at a point where it wont sustain the infrastructure for that whole industry and youre looking at millions of jobs that will be lost. What is your comments in 14 seconds . Well, the challenge obviously is to find a solution. An that is why it was important to put Research Money behind that solution. And that is exactly what the congress did in the farm bill in providing Additional Resources directed to citrus Green Research and that is what were doing to get the money out the door as quickly as possible and in the hands of the folks do the research. There is Promising Research on vectors and Promising Research on heat therapy and Promising Research on fos forrous utilization that over the long haul could solve this but that is where the focus is on containing it to the extent we can and figure out through research how to solve it. I appreciate your efforts and mr. Chairman thank you for letting him go over. Yielding back. Mr. Scott, five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. Welcome, mr. Secretary. First of all mr. Secretary it was great being with you in georgia back in it march when you came. And we had a wonderful time. Mr. Secretary, my state of georgia produces more poultry than any other state in the United States. On an average day the georgia poelt ty industry produces 29 Million Pounds of chicken, 6. 3 Million Pounds of eggs and 5. 5 Million Pounds of hatching age. And so you can see we have a very profound economic and business agriculture impact with our poultry. And i wanted to ask you with the migratory season coming and birds coming south, can you tell us exactly what your department is doing to help thwart this avian bird flu and getting down into the south . Congressman, were taking a number of steps. Let me start with something that congressman peterson has been involved in and helpful with and that is the development of a vaccine that could potentially be of assistance. Were making progress. We have a seed strain that appears to be successful with reference to chickens. It is in the prot he is of being tested for turkey. Once those tests are completed it will go to the company that basically is capable of producing the vaccine. And they in turn will work with other Companies Working on vaccines to begin the process of developing it commercially. We have requested resources to allow for stockpiling which i know congressman peterson is interested in us doing so that is first and foremost one thing were doing to try to focus. The second thing were able to do if we can obtain a vaccine 100 effective we want to work with our trading partners so we doesnt discourage trade in targeted ways. Let me ask you. What is being done specifically to help the growers . The vaccine is one thing is vaccine. The second thing is bio Security Operations to tighten up operations to reduce the risk of this occurring. There is not a lot of what you can do in terms of changing the flight of birds in terms of migratory patterns. Let me ask you mr. Secretary, what about funding. What about helping with funding on this. There are certain funds that the a. P. H. I. S. Is responsible for. I want to know are any of these funds going to help the growers on the ground . Yes. We have already committed well over 500 million for assistance to growers in two primary categories. One indemnifying for loss and in two in helping to pay for the reasonable expenses for cleanup and disinfection. We are also working closely with the industry to try to create a tight bio security set of protocols as soon as possible so we can do the best job to mitigate the spread of this if it occurs again. So you are saying there are funds that can be directed to help the growers on the ground. And they actually have been they have gotten resources out to farmers. All right. The other thing is i want to complement you working with my alma mater, florida a m university, for that tremendous tremendous that land in florida, i think will be the largest acquirement of land to help beginning farmers for any of the colleagues and i just want to thank you for that. And while im on the subject of the 1890s mr. Secretary, your your assistant sect for civil rights mr. Joe leonard joined with many of us in the concern for getting more africanamerican students going into the business of agriculture and agriculture business. And we are very, very much on board with that. I want you to also tell him how much we appreciate him providing that leadership to to help us get funds to be able to help these students to be able to go into careers in agra business. And one of the things we hope were able to do is tweak language in the farm bill that will allow these 1890s to be able to add the area of student scholarships and loan forgiveness, much as we did for our veterinarians, as you remember, we sponsored legislation, got that passed we saw a shortage of veterinarians and we did and helped them with loan forgiveness and so i wanted to make you aware of that and ask for your support and help as we move forward on that initiative to help the africanamerican students as well. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman five seconds. Just congressman there are 550 scholars currently working at usda from these 1890 universities that are getting scholarship help and assistance and the commitment of a job at usda so were going to continue to work to make sure that bright young people have opportunities at usda as well as agra business. Time is expired mr. Kelly for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman and thank you mr. Secretary for being here. First, just going back to the midas, i thank you first for your vigilance once you found out there was something going wrong and the money was being appropriated and for jumping on that and taking immediate action but to me as a former prosecutor there is no greater crime than the violation of the public trust and just basically corruption and so i thank you but im very disappointed that our Justice System did not civilly or criminally punish someone for abusing that much of the publics money. What policies and procedures have you taken now to ensure we dont take as long to discover flawed and a fraud and abuse by your department . Have you done anything and what steps have you done to make sure that we get to that a little quicker . Well one thing weve done with reference to the strike force and oao is to look at the recommendations that oig has recommended and were following through on each recommendation. We have a different system for competitive review and competitive grants in terms of the 2501 grants that were concern. There are two sets of eyes. A panel not connected to usda that reviews the applications and a second panel that reviews the mathematical computations for determination of competitive ps and that process is much better than it was. In terms of midas, we have changed the way in which we deal with i. T. One of the problems we confronted when i became secretary is that each missionary of usda it its own cio operating relativelyin deposit of each other. And now everybody is working in a collaborate and integrated way so the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. And weve created an eboard that reviews projects and required updates and is willing and able to ask the difficult questions. We have solved the issue of the different vision between kansas city and d. C. And put a project manager in charge of each of the Major Projects so i know there is someone personally responsible for over sight and those people are meeting with me on a regular basis. I have monthly meetings on midas, i have monthly meetings on arc and i will continue to have those meetings and monthly meetings on blue print which is designed to create savings within and more efficient government. So there is a lot going on in that space that didnt go on in 2009 and 2010. Thank you, mr. Secretary. On the supplemental nutrition assistance program, how is how are you working with states to ensure or to bolster our antifraud efforts . Because i understand both you and the states have a process to work and so how are we working with states to bolster that process . Two different responses to that congressman. First of all, the fraud rate in snap is over 1 . It is historically at low rates. Significantly lower than it was five years ago, ten years ago, 15 years ago. Two reasons. One, we are working more collaboratively with states and providing states with better training and data mining information and there are 7 million transactions in snap aday and were using Computer Technology to identify future problems. We saw problems with lost cards. People coming in every move saying i lost my card and we had a pilot in North Carolina that was successful advising folks when theyve had multiple cards lost this is a problem and you may be violating the law and weve seen a decrease in the number we did 700,000 investigates and interviews on a personal basis and 40,000 people were disqualified from snap as a result of those investigations and constantly looking at the 260 businesses that are snap eligible and about 1400 of those were basically stopped from doing business because they were involved in activities that they shouldnt be involved in. So there is an ongoing effort. We obviously still have work to do. We have teams in place, additional staff dedicated to this and well continue to work on it but when you are dealing with as many transactions and as many people, there are still work to be done. Thank you, mr. Secretary. Mr. Chairman, i yield back the balance of my time. Gentleman yields back. Mr. Gresham for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. I share the sentiments of my colleagues. It is nice to have you mr. Secretary. And thank you also for participating in Program Review and Program Support and visiting my home state of new mexico. I appreciate that you spend time with my colleagues kelly and yo ho on figuring out where is the balance. You dont want to throw out a program. The programs and strike force and beginning ranchers and farmers these are the kind of initiatives in a state like new mexico that are incredibly meaningful if they are implemented correctly and we dont have waste or abuse in the programs but are critical. We have the average age of our farmers now is 60 and over. By and i appreciate that youve had another internal review looking at discriminatory practices and looking at making sure that you move the department forward and being clear about your relationship with the communities and im grateful for that. I think there is a lot of work to be done in programs. So looking at being forwardthinking and proactive so it is not a hotline tip that we are thinking about maybe random reviews of certain programs an even in doing that so it is not particularly focused on waste and abuse because the intent isnt to try to find programs that dont work, although we want that information, we want accountability and staff to be held accountable every time there is a purposeful or there is conduct that creates accountable issues in taxpayerfunded programs but in digs and as important is making sure that these programs work in the way that they are designed to and if they are not, to readdress that so they can because those initiatives both coming from the department as i identified strategies and methods to make a difference for future farmers and growing food for this country and responding to ideas that come from the constituents directly in this committee. Is there anything that we missed in this dialogue that helps you have a relationship with this committee but everyone to address the accountability so we are holding folks accountable, including in the private sector and think being the claw backs an making sure they are not involved in the mismanagement of the programs and doing everything we can to highlight that usda is leading the federal example for best practices and making these programs work for their intentded beneficiaries. A couple of things. I think were in a much different place than in 2008 when oao was created. We have a receipt for service, so people can prove they went into an office and if they didnt get hope they dont have a problem in the past of saying well we dont remember him coming in, well he has a receipt for service or request for service. We put minority members on county boards and committees which i think has helped and weve seen the election of the minority members occur after their selection so that is a good thing. The strike force, i think is in a much better place and much more effective. I would say the one thing that you could potentially look at is something that the chairman raised and in his question or my answer, and that is at what level will you require before action can be taken. In other words, is that standard of a criminal judgment and a civil judgment, is that the proper standard or proper bar that has to be crossed before you can take action. I dont know. I think that is something that you all may want to talk about. It may be that is a bright enough line that makes it easy for people to know when and when not to hold people accountable but it makes it pretty hard right, to other than removing somebody from office or asking them to leave the department it makes them it a little difficult if that is the bar. So that is maybe something you want to look at. Mr. Secretary, i appreciate that. And weve had these conversations about some of the differences between federal employment and federal Contracting Systems and other government systems, local level and state. And i inherited an agency in the 90 that is couldnt account for 1 million which at the time was 10 of the total budget and we dismissed almost half of the work force and it was difficult and in a Civil Service environment but it was warranted. And it you need to have the flexibility to have a hardline when you need a hardline and the opportunity to retool and redirect and retain employees working hard when a program is not flexible enough to meet the constituent so i applaud the chairman and look forward to more conversations of that nature to get it right. Gentle lady yields back. Mr. Davis for five minutes. Hi, mr. Secretary. First off, i want to thank you again for coming in here. Youve always been open and sometimes brutally honest with your answers. I appreciate your participation in this oversight hearing today. It has been great to work with you and many of your staff at the usda on a wide variety of issues where we dont agree on every single issue. One thing i found out about you personally and the usda is that you are willing to listen to all sides. So thank you for that. And you know it wouldnt be a hearing without me bringing up the School Nutrition program. I do actually want to thank you. I want to thank the department for actually bringing about some flexibility. I think we can do a little bit more. I look forward to working with you on that. Again, would you like to invite you to come out to one of our schools and talk to some of the folks on the ground in illinois about the program. Your folks have done that. Theyve done a great job. And i know were working together to make it even better. But before i get into the over sight question i do want to bring up one issue not related to School Nutrition but the summer meal program. I visit as many sights as i can and we have a concern with the lack of participation because of transportation issues both in rural areas that i serve and the smaller urban areas that i serve and other urban areas that i dont serve and can you give me ideas to increase participation in the Summer Meals Program that you and i can Work Together to make it happen. Well i appreciate your acknowledgment of working with the school lunch program. Two things. One, the ept program is in a pilot, we believe it does effectively deal with the issue of transportation in remote areas because it provides an alternative to a concrete specific site that a youngster has to go to. It gives that family a little more flexibility to get the food to provide summer meals. So an extension of that program might be in order. The second thing would be for drk to work with us and direct us to be a bit more flexible in terms of the physical sight. Right now we are we have a fairly narrow view of where the kids need to congregate and i have been encouraging our team with create ways to be more flexible instead of forcing kids to come to us we find out where the kids are and provide mobile opportunities and some of that has happened but more could be done. And anything i can do to be helpful to offer suggestions based on my visits in my district im happy to help and i appreciate your willingness to do so sir. I do want to ask you one quick over sight question. My colleague, mr. Yo hoe alluded to i. T. Issues in the past and i want to know what has the usda done to what steps have you taken to implement some i. T. Solutions to correct the problems discussed here today and what have you learned maybe in best practices from the private sector and is there anything issues that you see on the horizon that we might be able to assist with . Well, when i came into this department, i asked to send an email to the employees to introduce myself. And i was told that i couldnt do that. And i thought, well now that cant be clearly i could send an email to an employee. You can send a single employee but you have to do 17 separate emails. And they said they have 17 different separate email systems. We can go into a long detailed conversations about how many problems there are that with model but we spent a considerable period of time where we now have a single email system which obviously provides greater security and allows us to save money at the same time. So weve learned from the private sector an effort to source our technology. Again, i mentioned the fact we had silos individual cios and they were off buying different systems and hardware and software that werent compatible. We now have a strategic Sources Initiative where before you do something, you better find out who else in your missionary is doing the same thing and maybe you can purchase in bulk. And by the way before you do that, how about checking with other missionaries to determine whether or not they are buying the same thing at the same time in which case you could save substantial money so there is a focus on that and a focus on consistency and weve spent a good deal of time recently obviously in terms of cyber issues reviewing the systems identifying and creating authentication systems that are much, much tighter than they were six months ago. Thank you. My time has expired. Yielding back. Miss plaskett for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman mr. Ranking member for this hearing. I think it is very timely and much needed and i appreciate so much the secretarys having not just being forthcoming but having a really depth of information that hes able to provide the committee with. Mr. Secretary there has been quite a bit of discussion about the office of advocacy and outreach who created in part to avoid the wholesalin tire classes of Rural Development not being able to receive services. But i wanted to know if you could speak a little bit about and if you have information as to the penetration of minority farmers in the growth of agricultural exports. I know that under your leadership, the agency has really grown tremendously the amount of exports that our farmers have been able to be a part of in being able to send their goods off outside of the United States. And i didnt know if there had been any data correlated, compiled or any information that lets us know how much of that is really being able to go to businesses that are owned by minorities and minority farmers. As you were asking the question, congresswoman, it occurred to me that most of the activity and the progress that weve made with minority producers recently has been in the local and regional market. In other words within the u. S. Creating coops and doing business with local restaurants and local Grocery Stores and so forth. You ask a very interesting question and i dont have the answer specifically. We do have a breakdown of the number of Small Businesses that we do business with the minority owned businesses that we generally do business with at usda, but i dont know that we necessarily have a breakdown of how frequently africanamerican producers for example would benefit from an export. I would say my guess is there is not a great deal for the following reasons. One, most of the exports are bulk, a substantial of them are in bulk commodities which play to small scale agriculture. And if there is an opportunity it is in the organic space with the equivalency greemtss weve been able to negotiate with europe, japan, korea mexico canada, there is now a new opportunity for potentially exports that might be easier to participate in and a little bit easier. We have been working with the Commerce Department to try to create a streamline process for companies to export. There are so few companies in this country that actually export, it is less than 5 of the over all companies and most of them only export to one country and we are trying to find ways to get businesses into the export game for effectively. So im happy to go back to the team to ask specifically your question but my sense is probably youre not going to i know in the Virgin Islands the issue of organic and the fancy foods is an area that our farmers would be most interested in, the types of products that we would produce that would be outside of our local markets would be in the fancy foods, the tam erins, the gufa and the mango and that type of products but the one thing that you mentioned that was important in our area is when you talk about local and Regional Marketing and local and Regional Produce because i find that one other thing that i hear quite frequently from the local farmers is not having the resources to assist them with processing, having cooperatives but not being able to do the value added to those products. What resources have you seen being sent out to those areas in that respect . Two programs come to mind. Maybe three programs come to mind. The value added producer grant program, the local and regional Food Promotion Program and to a certain extent the Block Grant Program which is administered through the states and territories are where you can get resources. Ill have a team get in touch with you and encourage to do what a number of folks have done come down to usda and put together a half day presentation of all of the programs and youll be surprised at how many opportunities there are and wed be happy to do that. And would you be remiss not to mention that we would very much appreciate you and your staff and others coming down to the territory. One of the things that you talked about is something thats very dear to us, which is your Child Poverty initiative. Presently, there are about 31 of the children in the Virgin Islands live in poverty. So were very interested in farmers as well as our local government on how do we have our farmers the be able to participate in feeding those children through the school lunch program, as my college discussed and other areas to be able to serve those children. Thank you. Time is sxiefd. Thank you so much mr. Chairman. Mr. Allen, five minutes. Well this is i just came from a mark up so my mind is not all there. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here this morning. You had a lot going on here today. Just wanteded to ask a couple of questions on the pilot program. Usda officials awarded the block agreement to noncompetitively and they awarded them to unqualified Community Organizations hand picked by political appointee pearly s. Reed. Some of these Community Organizations were created just months before the award was made. These organizations allowed approximately 300,000 to be wasted. The oie recommended recovering that. Can you tell me what the status of that recommendation is . Yes. 233,000 has been recovered. Were currently in the process of establishing proof to the theres an issue involving 67,000 is already owed. Were in the process of trying to convince them that they have they still owe us 67,000. The 233,000 has been recovered. I was in the district and our folks are worried about the avian flu. Of course, we vrnt had that problem down south yet in georgia. But they are concerned with the migration of wild birds to the south over the winter. Anything we doing to try to stop that . Well, i think there are two things that can be done. One is to develop a vaccine and make sure that we are able to develop an effective vaccine, that our trading partners dont hold it against us for using it. Thats still an open question and weve been working with a number of countries today to get them to do this on a to ban regionally as opposed to the intooir country. Two, working with the industry to work on bioinitiatives and steps that could potentially be taken to mitigate the risk of spread of this. Three, i suppose this is to continue to focus on the most efficient way of dealing with it. If it doesnt hit in terms of disposal, in terms of depopulation so that we minimize the risk that can occur if we dont do that in a timely a. Where are we with the development of the vaccine . Theres a seed strain thats been developed thats 100 effective on chickens. Its being tested on turkeys. Cross your fingers and hope it is available to them. They in turn will begin the process of manufacturing and working with other Vaccine Companies that would want to purchase the license to be able to produce it. We have asked omb for Additional Resources to make sure i think its omb right . Omb to make sure that we have a sufficient resource to begin stockpiling that