Transcripts For CSPAN3 Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Oversight Hearing Testimony 20240622

Testifies before the House Agriculture Committee wednesday. This is two hours, 15 minutes. Good morning. This is a hearing on the committee of agriculture for oversight by the u. S. Department of agriculture will come to order. Ive asked Rick Crawford to open us with a prayer. Thank you mr. Chairman. Father, i bow humbling before you. Thankful for this country youve given us and, father, mindful of the great responsibility that youve charged us with. Father, just ask that everything that is said and done here today be pleasing in your sight and we 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 jesus name. Amen. Thank you, rick. I want to thank the secretary vilsack for coming to be with us this morning. He has a horde stop at 12 15. He has cabinet responsibilities to do. Mr. Secretary, thanks very much for being here this morning. Be careful on your knee there on your on the table. I want to say at the start of this, he and his staff have worked really hard to fulfill the multitude of Committee Requests for oversight information that weve flooded them with over the last several months. And i appreciate their cooperation and effort to do that and work with our team on that. Its the responsibility under the constitution and explicit and house rules that each of the authorizationing committees conduct oversight over the xrve branch areas of their jurisdiction. The American People demand that we hold our government accountable for the stewardship of our taxpayer dollars Holding Us Accountable as well. As identified by the departments Inspector General. Phyllis fong and the Government Accountability office. Id like to say a few word about the inspector. Shes served the Department Since 2002. Our office works hard in conducting audits each year all aimed at making the department more efficient. I want to thank the inspector for working with our committee over the last several months. Government employees must remember that each time they are awarded a grant or a contract, its the taxpayers money that theyre spending. Today, well examine a few of the programs the department manages and executes over the course of our oversight efforts this year. Weve focused on the Farm Service Agents midas Information Technology program and the office of advocacy and outreach grants and cooperative agreements awarded 2010 and 2011. Fsa is ledded for the might yallace program to modernize his delivery programs with farmers and ranches. Unfortunately its been mismanaged as evidenced by the fact that its 140 million over budget and only contains two of the five planned core budgets. Mr. Secretary, you signed a memorandum ceasing further development on midas. Gao agrees with that and that makes sense. This maintenance of midas alone is costly. I. T. Management across government has deemed a high risk area by gao, the committee wants to see the department of agriculture implement and they identified best practices and hold responsibility parties accountable. This meeting will continue to monitor the work of both the us did i a chief and Information Officer as well as the fsas chief Information Officer. Also i want to discuss today as i mentioned the office of advocacy and outreach, the award of grants and cooperative agreements under that program. Between 2010 and 2011, that office under the direction of pearly s. Reed awarded approximately 40 million in grants and cooperative agreements on a noncompetitive basis. And as mr. Secretary he gave taxpayer dollars away and this is alarming. I know its alarming to you, as well. The Inspector General noted as well, that those accountable for those be held accountable. Based on the public outcry that has occurred over other scandals involving the misuse of waste of taxpayer dollars, the American People want you to hold responsible those individuals accountable for egregious conduct in violation of that trust. Mr. Secretary we thank you and your staff again for the cooperation and look forward to continuing the work on oversight. Thank you for being here and i yield the Ranking Member for any opening comments he has to make. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And welcome, mr. Secretary. Appreciate you being here. Oversight of the usda is the responsibility the Committee Takes seriously. Having an open dialogue with the department is important not just to ensure that usda is operating in the best interests of our constituents, but implementing programs as congress intended. A few areas that we are specifically looking at today include the operation of the office of advocacy created by the 2008 farm bill. Awarding portion in section 2501 grant, 2010, 2011 and the review of the family Room Initiative and the long delay in development of midas, fsa feels is at issue. Since the secretary joining us today, i wouldnt be surprised if members use this opportunity to address others that may be happening in their district, such as the avian flu situation which is impacted many of my producers and others across the region. Ive 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 that occurs this fall. Again, mr. Chairman, i thank the thank you for holding todays hearing. Usda has a Large Department which can make adequate oversight a difficult task. And we might have a different ideas about how to get there but i think that we all want the department to be running effectively and efficiently as possible and the secretary has a big job. 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 pretty astounding. Theyre bound to have a couple of clichs here and there. Anyway, thank you, mr. Chairman. And i yield back. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Excuse me secretary vilsack. Thank you forebaggy here. The microphone is yours, sir. Mr. Chairman thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and for the Ranking Member, as well. Given the number of members who are going to participate in this committee meeting, mr. Chairman i wonder if i could defer my opening remarks 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 that they need to ask. Well i 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 best they can for the taxpayers they serve and the access of a few who voipt violate that trust hurt everybody and our conversations this morning will be about those few as opposed to brag on the rest of the folks who do a good job. So lets talk a little bit about pearly reed. I believe he was the under secretary in charge of spending a lot of money. The special agents that conducted that investigation discovered in addition to the 40 million in grants that 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 dollars to an individual in which he had a fiscal relationship with. Mr. Reed resigned, i guess, 2012. Did you ask for his resignation or did he do that on his own . Mr. Chairman i became aware of concerns about mr. Reeds handling of the incidents and the accounts that you just addressed. By virtue of a hot line tip that we received. Based on that tip, i asked immediately for the oig to investigate. The oig produced what is called a fast report, which indicated some concerns that they had, not a comprehensive report. I shared that report with mr. Reed indicated to him that obviously we were disappointed in what we had initially learned about this and following that conversation mr. Reed left the employment of the usda. 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 why, justice chose not to pursue a criminal actions . Mr. Chairman following the mr. Reed leaving the office, then the oig continued its review of activities involving 2501 and 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 to take a look at this. I believe it was referred down to the department of justice in arkansas. And the u. S. Attorney in arkansas chose not to 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 actions with reference to mr. Reed because of the code of federal regulations. Specifically, 180. 21. 10 and 470. 2110 that basically outlines processes that we could take if there is a criminal judgment or a civil judgment. Obviously, there is neither in this case. And so as a result we are where we are today. We focused our attention frankly, mr. Chairman as we received the fast report and after we received the full report on fulfilling the recommendations at oig outlined in terms of improvements to the programs and i can tell you that today they are different than they are in 2010 and 2011. All right. Those processes could could this individual be whats the phrase suspension or disbarment so i understand under the administration he was a consultant to the government. Can he be prevented from coming back under any kind of a contract . Under the code of federal regulations that i cited, mr. Chairman, in order to take that action, that specific action there has to be a criminal judgment or a civil judgment. In other words a course 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 take steps. We dont have that in this particular circumstance. Okay. I and mr. Reed, to be fair to mr. Reed, he did serve the nrds in a capacity for a number of years to the federal government before he came back as the assistant secretary of administration. And the reason i asked him to do that in 2009 was because our department had a very serious concern and problem with civil rights generally, which we wanted to aggressively address. Appreciate that. I believe you mentioned that this came to your attention on a hot line tip. A whistleblower tip. Can you walk us through the attitude at the department toward whistle blowers and how the function is available to people who see something goes on that they disagree with . Obviously, we encourage folks who are seeing activity that is inappropriate to notify us notify their supervisor november people in charge of concerns that they may have. Thats why we have the hot line 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 that when that hot line tip occurred, it came to my attention immediately and my first action was to ask the Inspector General to look into it. Were not ive 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 do whan and i want to do it as soon as i can because we are very interested in the job that we have. You didnt take very seriously what you had at the outset which is we have a responsibility to taxpayers to make sure these resources are being spent appropriately and its unfortunate and disappointing when that accidents occur. Thank you, mr. Secretary. 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 but they were having funding challenges and, you know, as i understand it i think that theres been an uneven kind of deal going on with the funding of 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 book the other day and in prove verbs, theres a couple of suggestions that a wiseman measures his steps and a wiseman has many conferences. With reference to midas, we didnt measure our steps and didnt have as many counselors as we needed frankly. When this thing was started in 2007, 2008 i think the vision was pretty grand, but i dont think people fully appreciated the difficulty of basically implementing that in the context of a 1980s system which is what we basically have at fsa offices. This is a huge undertaking and involves 11 million customers, 5 million farmers, and 38 million tracks of land. Is he its a huge undertaking. And frankly, we didnt have at the outset what we have today which is a process of review and many hands and many eyes basically watching this and doing this in an incremental way. So subjecting was an issue, 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 these 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. A farmer can walk into an fsa office today in any county in the country and facilitate and see all the records regardless of where that land might be located. That was not the case before. He had to go to individual offices if he had land in different counties. We also installed our Business Integrity efforts which will allow us to reduce errors and mistakes and were now working collaboratively with nrcs on their Gateway Program to take the next step which is to allow people to do the work they want to do at home without the necessity of even coming into an office. So 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 keyboard 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 the next step. Have we gotten rid of the as 4 let you know consistent of 36s . Are they gone . Well i dont think that i dont think that theyre totally gone and thats one of the complication thats essentially weve meshed and merged systems. Which may explain why were going to have to continue to patch and put resources into the system. This gets back to the different focus of folks in d. C. Which we have addressed. Thank you. As you know, first of all, i want to thank you and the department, dr. Clifford, for the work that you have done and continue to do helping us with our Avian Influenza situation. Which hit my district probably harder than anybodys. And, you know, theres concerns out there and you have done pretty good, i think in addressing those as they come along. It wasnt a perfect situation, but whenever you get in a crisis, you know, its not going to be perfect. But one of the concerns im hearing now is that theres inconsistencies and indemnity payments that, you know, we appreciate what youre doing and i think you have been doing it out of the ccc and the omb has been supporting you and so that seems to be working. But apparently there are different endimty payments for high pass Avian Influenza versus lopan Avian Influenza. This goes back to when we did legislation when we had the lopath in virginia, i guess. So under the regulations, apparently egg layers are compensated for future egg production according to the lopath regulation, but the high path regulations are silent in that aspect. So the turkey folks, you know are wondering, you know, why theyre not compensated 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 and constantsy to the 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 that would be based on the size of the operation in terms of cleaning and upkeep expense, as well, because there is obviously some confusion about precisely would gets paid to do what relative to disinfection and cleaning. Now, this is a process that i think that 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. Thats why we have set up a task force which i instructed could be set up for ways we could be better prepared if this emerges in the fall. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Lucas. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And mr. Secretary, i have to echo the comments of the chairman and the Ranking Member about the challenges that you and the department have faced in implementing your other dramatic change in policy in the 2014 agriculture. I think in most areas its been fundamentally amazing how successful that has been. But like anything i have a few questions, the secretary and one of the things im curious about, the 100 million that was provided for the implementation of title one, due to the increased workload from arc and plc, loum of that money was used and, if you could, perhaps a followup is necessary, but provide the committee with a written breakdown of how that money was spent. Can you touch on that mr. Secretary . I can mr. Well i by the way, your county office folks have worked very diligently to get all this done. Theyre good people. But they face some challenges out there. Theres so many chaires and former chairs on this committee im probably going to exactly. Congressman, we are using this resource in a planned and strategic way, 100 million. We didnt use it all at once. Were going to be mrafk ramping up as work requirement are required and facilitated. I cant tell you today the exact amount that has been allocated, but i can tell you that the staff and temporary staff has been hired in offices and that we are in the process of determine where best to locate additional staff based on workloads. We will provide you with a breakdown as youve requested in terms of where the money has been spent and what weve purchased with it as soon as this hearing is over. I very much appreciate that, secretary. Its one of the things that i and the other members of this committee promise those folks out in the field when they were going through the challenges of implementing this was that they would be help. Normally, staff funding is normally handled by the provisions in this staff committee. The offer has a committee. I would point out that overall usda staff is down by somewhere in excess of 10,000 ftes since i became secretary and fsa has been disproportionately hit with those reductions. Absolutely. And this just shows how much more effort folks in the field are shouldering. That said mr. Secretary, ive visited with you and a number of the other officials about a slightly different area. The way in which it appears the usda is implementing a net effect thats tantalizing growers who plant cover crop for producers who certified acreage plant and covered crop generic base particularly in the 14 and 15 crop cycle. The question i get with them is why cant you have used your discretion to allow those crops to be eligible for arc and plc. Congressman, i think that the concern we had was the way in which the statute or the bill was crafted in terms of the flexibility that we had or dont have. Be happy to continue to work with you on this. Captioning performed by vitac im not going to suggest it was done in an effective way because obviously it wasnt. It started with a grand vision an Implementation Plan that didnt understand and appreciate how difficult it was going to be to overlay all of this on top of 1980 system. There was a disconnect between the folks in kansas city who do a lot of our i. T. Stuff and folks in d. C. Who do our i. T. Stuff. They werent communicating particularly effectively and we didnt have enough oversight. All of that has been changed. I hope it is because if it was 1980 system they started with and it was 2009 when things were starting to be implemented, you would have thought they would have been projecting ahead on the new technology thats going to come out. That relates to the fact that there are 2100 offices and people in those offices comfortable with one system. 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 and start looking at this thing incrementally. We did the first effort, to make sure folks could access records regardless of where they were. Big convenience opportunity and tremendous savings of staff thats implemented and Business Integrity stuff to reduce errors. Now were working on questions that are working clabivety to allow producers to work from their homes. That process is in play and hopefully over the course of the next months or so that well see progress on that. There is work being done. I dont think we want to say we should stop the program. We dont want to stop the program. We want to make it more convenient. It was saying here it was only effective of 2021 and ive got two other questions. It said the fsa continued to pay contractors of april of 2015, 213 million in taxpayers dollars were obligated and oi gixt reported during the time frame, they paid the contractor over 108 million. Isnt there a way to stop that. If youve got an inefficient contractor, one thats inept, is there a way you can stop a program in the future and then ive got something i have to ask you about citrus. The answer is yes and thats why were on the effort were looking at 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. Thats caused some interesting concern. Id like to work with you on that and talking about the citrus in florida. I appreciate the help youve given us, florida we had a high of over 300 million boxes of oranges accounted for and weve seen that drop rapidly due to screening. Is there anything being held up in the program that needs to be expedited so that we just talked with our ag commissioner yesterday and florida weve gone from 300 million boxes then went down to 200. This years crop looks like its going to be under 100 million boxes and at a point where it wont sustain the infrastructure for that whole industry and youre looking at millions of jobs that will be lost. Whats your comments in 14 seconds . The challenge obviously is to find a solution. Thats why it was important to continue to put Research Money behind that solution. Thats exactly what the congress did in the farm bill in providing Additional Resources directed to citrus green research, getting the money out the door as quickly as possible and in hands of folks doing research. Theres Promising Research on heat therapy and fos forrous that could solve this. Thats where the focus is on essentially containing it to the extent we can and trying to figure out through research how to solve it. Mr. Chairman, thank you for letting him go over. Mr. Scott, five minutes. Thank you. Mr. Secretary first of all mr. Secretary, it was great being with you in georgia back in 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 poultry industry produces 29 Million Pounds of chicken 6. 3 Million Pounds of eggs and 5. 5 Million Pounds of hatching eggs. 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 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 is involved in and helpful with, the development of a vaccine that could potentially be of assistance. Were making progress. We have a seed strain that appears to be fairly successful with reference to chickens. Its no in the process of being tested for turkey. Once completed it goes to the company that basically is capable of producing the vaccine. And they in turn will work with other Companies Working with vaccines to begin the process of developing commercially. We have requested resources to be able to allow for stock piling, which i know congressman peterson is interested in us doing. Thats fist and foremost to try to focus. The second thing were doing, if were able to obtain a vaccine thats 100 effective, we want to work with trading partners so we dont discourage trade as a result of unitization to help in different ways. What is done specifically to help growers . The vaccine one thing is the vaccine and the second is focus on biosecurity provisions to allow them to tighten up operations to reduce of risk of this occurring. Theres not a lot of you can do about 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 aphis is responsible for. I want to know, are any of these funds going to help the growers on the ground . We have already committed well over 500 Million Dollars for assistance to growers in two primary categories, one, inindemnitying for loss and helping to paying for cleanup and disinfection. Were also working cloegssely with the industry to create a set of protocols as possible so we do the best job we can to mitigate the consequences and spread of this if it occurs again. So youre saying there are funds that can be directed to help the growers on the ground. And they actually have been. They actually have been and gotten resources out to farmers. The other thing is i want to compliment you working with my alma mater for that tremendous, tremendous that is that land in florida i think it will be a largest acquirement of land for any of the colleges and i want to thank you for that. While im on the subject, mr. Secretary, youre a assistant secretary for civil rights plrks joe leonard joined with many of us in the concern for getting more africanamerican students going into the business of agriculture and agriculture business. 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 to get funds to be able to help these students to be able to go into careers in agribusiness, one of the things we hope we can 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. As much as we did for our veterinarians, as you remember we sponsored legislation, got that passed and saw a shortage with veterinarians and actually did and helped them with loan forgive forgiveness. I wanted to make you aware for that 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 500 i believe 550 scholars working at usda from the 1890 universities dwetgetting scholarship help and assistance so were going to continue to work to make sure bright young people have opportunities that usda as well as agribusiness. Thank you, the gentlemans time is expired. Mr. Kelly, five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank you mr. Secretary for being here. First, i thank you for your vigilance once you found out there was something going wrong and money was being appropriated and taking immediate action. However, to me, as a former prosecutors theres no greater crime than the violation of the public trust. And just basically corruption and so i thank you but im very disappointed our Justice System did not either civilly or criminally punish someone for abusing that much of of the publics money. What policies and procedures have you taken now to ensure that we dont take as long to discover fraud and abuse by your department . Have you done anything . And what steps have you taken to ensure we get to that a little quicker . Well, one thing weve done with reference to the strike force is to basically take a look at the recommendations that oig is recommended and basically were following through each one of those recommendations. We have a completely different system for competitive review and competitive grants in terms of the 2501 grants that were concerned. There are two sets of eyes that look on this. A panel thats not connected to usda specifically that reviews the applications. Theres also a second panel that uses the mathematical computations for determination of competitiveness. That process is much, 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 weve confronted when i became secretary, each missionary of usda had its own cio operating relatively independently of each other. We have a process in which everyone is working in a collaborative and integrated way. We know what the right hand is always doing in the left hand. We have also created an e board that reviews projects and requires updates and is willing and able to ask the difficult questions. We have solved the issue to a certain extent of the different vision between kansas city and d. C. And we have put a project manager in charge of each of these Major Projects so i know theres someone personally responsible for oversight and they are meeting on a regular basis. I have monthly meetings on midas and monthly meetings on arc, and im going to continue to have those meetings and monthly meeting on our efforts at blue print, designed to create savings within and more efficient government. Theres a lot going on in that space that didnt go on in 2009 and 2010. On the supplemental problem, how are you working with states to ensure or to bolster our antifraud efforts . I understand both of you and states have a process to work 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 a little bit over 1 . Its historically at low rates, significantly lower than five years ago, ten years ago, 15 years ago. Two reasons, were working more collaboratively with states and providing states with better training and were data mining information. There are 7 million transactions in snap a day. Were using Computer Technology to aidentify where there may be problems. We saw a problem with lost cards, peoplinge coming in, i lost my card. We have a process that we pilot in north carolina, very successful, advising folks when theyve had multiple cards lost that hey, this is a problem and you may be violating the law. Weve seen a significant decrease in the number of we did over 700,000 investigations and interviews on a personal basis, over 40000 people disqualified from snap as a result of those investigations and were constantly looking at the 260,000 businesses that are snap eligible. And about 1400 of those were basically stopped from doing business because they were involved in activities they shouldnt be involved in. Theres an ongoing effort. We have work to do. We have teams that are now in place, additional staff dedicated to this. Were going to continue to work on it but when youre dealing with as much transactions and many people, theres still work to be done. Thank you. I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you, mr. Grish. Five minutes. I share the sentiments of my colleagues, 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 actually have a similar line of questioning and i appreciate that you spent so much time with my colleagues kelly and figuring out what is the balance. You dont want to throw out a program the outreach programs and Strike Force Initiative and beginning ranchers and farmers, these are the kinds of initiatives that in a state like new mexico are not only incredibly meaningful if they are implemented correctly and dont have waeflt or abuse in those programs but are critical. We have the average age of our farmers now is 60 and over. And i appreciate that youve had another internal review looking at discriminatory practices and really looking at making sure that you move the department forward in being clear about your relationship with these communities. And im grateful for that. I think theres a lot of work to be done in those program. Being forward thinking and pro active so its not a hot line tip that were thinking about random reviews of certain programs and in doing that so its not particularly focused on waste and abuse. The intent isnt to find programs that dont work although we want that information. We want accountability. We want staff to be held accountable every time there is a purposeful or theres conduct that creates accountability issues and taxpayer funded programs but in addition and as important, is making sure that these programs work in the way they are designed to and if they are not, to readdress that so they can because those initiatives, both coming from the department as identified strategies and methods that will make a difference for future farmers and growing food for this country. But also responding to ideas that come from our constituents directly in this committee. Is there anything that weve missed in this dialogue that helps you have a relationship particularly with this committee, but everyone to really address both the account accountability so were holding folks accountable and thinking about those claw backs and making sure they are not involved in these mismanaging these 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 intended beneficiaries. A couple of things, were in a much different place than we were in 2008 when it was created. We have a receipt for Service System now in place so people can prove they went into an office and didnt get help, they dont have a problem as they did in the past of saying, we dont remember him coming in. He has a receipt for service or receipt for request of service. We put members on county boards and committees, which has helped. Weve seen the election of a lot of those minority members occur after their selection. Thats 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 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 is that standard of a criminal judge the and civil judgment. Is that the proper standard or bar that has to be crossed before you can take action . I dont know. I think thats something that you all may want to talk about. It may be thats a bright enough line that makes it easy to know when to and not to hold people ngtable. But it makes it pretty hard, right, to other than removing somebody from office or asking them to leave the department, it makes it a little bit difficult if thats the bar. Thats something you may want to look at. Mr. Secretary, i appreciate that. And we have these conversations about some of the differences between federal employment and Contracting Systems and other Government Systems local level and state and i inherited an agency in the 90s that couldnt account for a Million Dollars which at the time was 10 of our total budget. And we dismissed almost half of the workforce. And it was difficult in a Civil Service environment but it was warranted. And its you need to have at flexibility to have a hard line when you need a hard line and opportunity to retool and redirect and retain employees working hard sometimes when a program is not flexible enough to meet the needs of its constituents. I applaud the chairman and look forward to more conversations of that nature to get it right. Mr. Davis for five minutes. Hi, mr. Secretary. I want to thank you again first off, for coming in here. Youve always been open and sometimes brutally honest with your answers. I appreciate your participation in this oversight hearing today. Its been great to work with you and many staff at the usda in a variety of issues where we dont agree on every single issue. One thing i found out about you personally, youre willing to listen to all sides. Thank you for that. And you know it wouldnt be a hearing without you coming here without me bringing up the School Nutrition program. I do just actually want to thank you and 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, id 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 and done a great job and i know were working together to make it even better. But before i get into the oversight question, i want to bring up one question not related to School Nutrition but Summer Meal Program. I visit as many summer meal sites as i can and i know we have a concern with the lack of participation because of transportation issues. Both in rural areas that i serve and some of the smaller urban areas that i serve too and other urban areas i dont serve. Can you give me any suggestions on how we might be able to increase participation in the Summer Meal Program that you and i can Work Together to make happen . Well, i would say two things in response and i appreciate your acknowledgement of our teamworking with you through the difficult issues involving the school lunch program. The ept program we have and pilot, we believe does effectively deal with the issue of transportation and remote areas because it base he caniseically provides an alternative to a specific site that a youngster has to go to and gives that family 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 to work with us and direct us to be a bit more flexible in terms of the actual physical site. Right now we are we have fairly narrow view of where these kids need to con greg gate and ive been encouraging our team to look at creative ways to be more flexible so instead of forcing kids to come to us, we figure out where the kids are to begin with. And provide mobile opportunities and some of that has happened but we probably could do more. Well, anything i can do to be helpful, and offering suggestions for that flexibility, based upon my visits and my district, im happy to help and i appreciate your willingness to do so. I do want to ask you one quick oversight question. My colleague, mr. Yoho alluded to i. T. Issues in the past. What has the usda done to what steps have you taken to implement some i. T. Solutions to correct some of the problems that have been discussed here today and what have you learned in best practices from the private sector and is there any issues that you see on the horizon that we might be able to assist with . When i came into this department, i asked to send an email to employees to introduce myself. And i was told that i couldnt do that. I thought, that cant be. Clearly i can send an email to an employee. Sir, you can send an email but cant send a single email. You have to do 17 separate emails. What do you mean 17 separate emails . We have 17 separate email systems. Well, we can go into a long detailed conversation about how many problems there are with that model but we spent a considerable amount of time and we have a single system that provides greater security and allows us to save money at the same time. So one thing weve learned from the private sector is, an effort to try to strategically source our technology again, i mentioned the fact we had individual cios. They were off buying different systems and different hardware and software that werent necessarily compatible. We have a Strategic Sourcing Initiative where basically before you do something, you better find out who else in your in addition nar is doing the same thing and maybe you can purchase in bulk and by the way, before you even 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. Theres a focus on that and focus on consistency. Weve spent a good time of deal recently in terms of cyber issues reviewing our systems and identifying and creating awe thennication systems that are much tighter than they were six months ago. Thank you. My time has expired. Thank you, mr. Chairman mr. Ranking member for this hearing. I think is very timely and much needed and i appreciate so much the secretarys having not just being forthcoming but having a depth of information that hes able to provide the committee with. Mr. Secretary, you theres been quite a bit of discussion about the office of advocacy and outreach created in part to avoid the whole sale entire of Rural Development not being able to receive services. But i wanted to know if you could speak a little bit and if you had 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 Grocery Stores and so forth. You ask an 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 we necessarily have a breakdown of how frequently africanamerican producers for example, would benefit from a an export. My guess is theres not a great deal for the following reasons. One, most of our experts are bulk, substantial amount of them are bulk commodities which play to the strengths of large scale ag producers. Number two, if there is an opportunity it may be in the organic space. I think a lot of minority producers are getting in the space with the equivalency agreements weve been able to negotiaty europe and japan and korea and mexico and canada. Theres new opportunities for exports that might be a little bit easier to participate in and little bit easier. Weve been working with the Commerce Department to create a streamline process for companies to export. Theres so many so few companies in this country actually export its less than 5 of the overall companies. And most of them only export to one company. Were trying to figure outweighs to help Small Businesses get in the export game more effectively. Im happy to ask specifically your question but my sense is youre not going i know in the Virgin Islands the issue of organic as well as 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 guavas and mangoes and those type of products. One thing that you mentioned that is really important as well, when you talk about local and Regional Marketing and local and regional produce. Because i find that one of the things i hear quite frequently from our local farmers, not having resources to assist them with processing, having cooperatives but not being able to do the value added to those products. What resources and 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 to produce Grant Program and local and regional food promotion program, and to a certain extent the special crop Block Program administered through the territories are three areas where you could potentially get resources. What well do congresswoman ill have my team get in touch with you and would encourage you to do what a number of folks have done recently, which is to come down and have your team come down to usda and put a half day presentation of all programs. Youll be quite surprised how many opportunities there are that would be great. We would be happy to do that. I would be remiss to not mention that of course that we would very much appreciate you and your staff and others coming down to the territory. One of the things you talked about is something thats very dear to us, the Child Poverty initiative. Presently there are about 31 of the children in the Virgin Islands live in poverty. And so were very interested in our farmers as well as our local government on how do we have our farmers be able to participate in feeding those children through the school lunch program, as my colleague discussed and other areas to be able to serve those children. Thank you. The gentleladys time has expired. Mr. Allen, five minutes. All right. Here we go. Well, this is i just came from a markup mr. Chairman my mind is not all there, but anyway, were back. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here this morning. And a lot going on here today. Just wanted to ask a couple of questions on the oao strike force pilot program. Usda officials awarded the cooperative agreements noncompetitively to unqualified Community Organizations hand picked by political appointee reed. Some of these Community Organizations were created months before the award was made. These organizations allowed approximately 300,000 to expire and be wasted. The oig recommended recovering that sum. 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. We believe that still is owed. The entity that were dealing with believes theyve already paid it. Were in the process of trying to convince them that they still owe us 67,000. 233,000 has been recovered. Okay, sir. Another question was in the district and of course our folks are worried about the avian flu. We havent 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 were 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 if 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 the number of countries today to get them convinced to do this on a to ban regionally as opposed to the entire country. And two, working with the industry to identify additional biosecure initiatives and steps that could potentially be taken to mitigate the risk of spread of this. And then three, i suppose is to continue to focus on the most efficient way of dealing with it if it does hit in terms of disposal and depopulation so that we minimize the risk that can occur if we dont do that properly or in a timely way. Where are we with the development of the vaccine . Theres a seed strain thats been developed thats 100 effective on chickens and now in the process of being tested by our folks on turkeys. Cross your fingers and hope it is 100 effective for them. Once that occurs, the seed strain will be provided to the Virus Company that has basically the license agreement and they in turn will begin the process of manufacturing and working with other Vaccine Companies that would want to perfect the license to be able to produce it. We have asked omb for Additional Resources i think yeah omb to make sure we have sufficient resource to begin stock piling that vaccine. Were also working with as i said earlier our foreign friends, we had a meeting in baltimore where over 30 countries came with representatives to talk to them about the appropriate way of banning poultry if we have this. That its not fair to your poultry producers because theres an incident in oregon or iowa, to ban production from you. And so were continuing to work on that as well. The last thing were trying to do, convince congress this is a long term issue, because im pretty sure this isnt the only time well have to deal with Something Like this. To see if we can complete the funding for the poultry Lab Improvements that i think are absolutely necessary and modernization of that lab. That would be good. Would this be available fairly soon or whats the timetable . You know i would hope there would be but i dont i dont want to speak for the company in terms of how quickly they can turn it around but you know, im pretty impressed with the fact that in a relatively short period of time weve come along way. The previous virus was 60 effective which meant if you treated 100 birds, 60 would be okay 40 wouldnt. Thats not enough. Im about out of time wont get to ask this question, but im still hearing a real problem with h2 a as far as Legal Services in suing our Vegetable Growers and costing them hundreds and thousands of dollars on frivolous lawsuits that needs to be addressed and we need to come up with a solution. I yield back the remainder of my time. Thank you. I thank the gentleman. Chair recognizes himself for five minutes. Mr. Secretary earlier when you were answering to trent kellys questions about the cios you indicatedcios and various agencies, do i understand youve hired a chief cio to oversee those agencies . Theres always been a chief cio, but that chief cio wasnt empowered, if you will, to have sufficient oversight and sufficient responsibility in my view to basically be able to know and be able to channel all other cios from each mission area in the proper direction. Do they have to report to that one individual . Yes and theres a process based on a directive i signed some time ago that says, youre all in this together here. Youre not going to be operating separate and distinctly from each other. Im glad to hear that. We had the exact same problem in the department of Homeland Security and its a real mess, if you dont empower one individual to have direct authority over those individuals because they want to do their own thing. And they do. That creates a lot of problems. Glad to hear it. Many people, including myself believe that the epas waters of the United States rule is expanding the epa jurisdiction beyond what they are statute orally authorized. If they determine theres a jurisdictional water in a producers field but the Natural Resources Conservation Office hasnt identified it as a wetland. How do you reconcile that . The correct answer is i dont know and the hope would be that that doesnt occur. I think theres still an awful lot of work yet to be done in terms of this issue. I dont think weve resolved it. Theres going to be a lot of litigation and concern about this, but my focus and frankly what ive told our people is, were in the business of trying to help farmers do whatever they have to do to comply with whatever the Law Regulation might be. Thats why were trying to figure outweighs in which we can be better at what we do more efficient, more effective and timely, to be able to use resources more effectively. Thats why were excited about the program because we think its a way of dealing with large water shed scale projects that could make a difference in terms of water quality. Thats our focus. Let me ask you the alternative, what if usda identify wetlands that the core and epas have not identified . What will that mean for farmers and ranchers will they be clean water wet lands . I dont know the answer to that question. Id be happy to have our team try to respond to both questions. Those are technical questions and frankly i dont noel theknow the answer. I fear theyll end up in legislation and thats unfair to farmers and ranchers. Thats a pretty safe bet today. Thank you very much thats all i have. Chair now recognizes the gentlelady whose name i cant seal from here. Ms. Custer from New Hampshire. Thank you very much. Thank you mr. Secretary. I apologize for my delay but your contemporary yan colleague mr. Mcdonald was at the Veterans Affair committee and we had a informative hearing there. I wanted to say first off, thank you very much. Im very excited in New Hampshire that we have growth in farming. I think one of the few states, 5 5 increase in new farmers and typically small, lot of emphasis on farm to table and buying local and farmers markets taking off in our region. I wanted to talk to you about the Program Beginning farmers and ranchers and Inspector General report issued in may of 2015 about the generation of farmers that are retiring from the industry and how we can encourage i dont want to say young people because sometimes its young people and sometimes its not young people. It may be people seeking a second career. The quote was dispute considerable resources and effort provided by usda agency, the Department Lacks sufficient performance goals, direction and coordination and monitoring to ensure success that funds were being used effectively by farmers and i wanted to see if you could comment on that. How can we implement effective performance goals to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being well spent in this regard . Well ive asked the deputy secretary to lead this effort and she is traveling around the country visiting with a number of organizations and groups of folks interested in getting into farming or folks who are encouraging folks to get into farming. One of the issues that has cropped up that we have asked specifically the beginning Farmer Advisory Group to look at is this issue of land tenure, you mentioned the fact there are going to be people retiring and leaving farming business and thats probably true. The question is what happens to the land . And the question then is, whoever owns that land what is their ultimate goal here or their relatives ultimate goal . To maximize return or create opportunity for the next generation or combination of both . Frankly, ive asked the task force to come with recommendations on this issue of land tenure, what can we or should we do at usda with reference to programs to ensure theres that proper balance . So its not a focus simply on bottom line but a focus on next generation. Number one. Number two, you all ask us to create a military liaison position with the marine who works at fsa. Actively pursuing efforts to try to get into military bases with information about farming opportunities. And basically providing opportunities for us to actually go on base to talk to folks who may be retiring or thinking about retiring about the opportunities that exist in farming. I think its also helpful the recent effort by the farmer Rancher Alliance which is predominantly production agriculture to create a more positive image about farming and more supportive image, to push back a little bit on some of the folks who are constantly critical of farmers. I have seen recently some very, very positive good ads, saw one yesterday from the corn growers that was fabulous about the opportunities in farming. And i think the more we are the more we focus on the positive aspect of farming, the more we focus on all kinds of diversity within farming and size of operations and methods of production crops being produced and people the better its going to be in terms of our ability to track more young people younger people or more folks into this business. Were seeing an uptick in beginning farmers. We still have more to do. Well, i appreciate you bringing up the military and i would encourage you as well with veterans i know our Veterans Administration and White River Junction vermont on the border with New Hampshire has a program for veterans in farming because of the connection to working with their hands and working outdoors, theres Good Mental Health aspects to farming that are very conducive to a better transition back into civilian life. I also wanted to commend your deputy for coming to New Hampshire to have an event with Women Farmers and i really appreciate that. I think thats something that we need to look into. And i look forward to working with you on all of these programs to bring in different constituencies to farming. The issue of veterans is one i care deeply about. Its obviously personal to me because of a nephew who served in afghanistan who is now potentially hopefully thinking about a career after he graduates from college in Forest Service. These folks are good problem solvers. One of the problems weve seen at usda and ive asked the secretary about this, were trying to get more veterans to work at usda and in federal government generally. Weve had some success seen increased numbers, bumt the attrition rate folks coming and leaving, is disproportionately high. Were asking our team to look at this, why is this . What werent redoing to make sure these folks are ak clim alted and get back into a system. The Forest Service is nice because it has more of a military mindset but the other Mission Areas we need to continue to do a little more work to make it a welcoming place for veterans and should increase the more people getting into farming for veterans. Thank you. Mr. King five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary you mentioned vaccine that 100 effective for ai. Im wondering if may be in reference to a company out of iowa . Its not. Its a different company. Its work the seed strain has been done by i believe about our researchers in concert with another company. But theres nothing to prevent the vaccine from participating in this once we get it figured out. Im hopeful there will be an open competition to that and bring all of the technology to the table and appreciate your words on that. The key here i think is for whatever entity gets it, gets to it first, being willing to provide the Licensing Arrangements and we will absolutely facilitate that because no one company this is my belief. I dont know if this is right or not, no one company will be able to produce as much as we need as quickly as we need it. Hopefully well be able to get a lot of folks working to clabively together. We stock pile enough, if it hits us hard, were in a position to respond quickly. Theres much to be said by vaccine. I appreciate your comments on this. Which caught my interest in the discussion with mr. Yoho, i watched a demonstration in storm laks iowa, before the fourth of july, taken out by that demonstration more than 99 of the soluble phosphorus at the discharge of the plant. I wanted to bring that to your attention, new Technology Emerging here that looks like it could effectively solve the problem we have. This opportunity to mention that. I didnt know if it was something you were aware of. I wasnt aware of that. I was referring to the use at the base of a tree thats been hit by the Citrus Greening that has an impact on minimizing the consequences of Citrus Greening. Well get that information to you and ask you to pass that along to your people that want to be focused on it. Sure. Then another piece of this, theres so much to be said about bird flu. I wanted to make sure that the committee is aware and public is aware of how big this is. Ill say i know of no livestock disease problem that has in the history of the country that has met the magnitude of this avian inflewuenza we have. Were looking at nationwide, 48 million birds that have been affected by this all dead. 75 75 of the layers in the country, iowa, 92 of the layers in iowa in the fourth Congressional District my district. And so this is devastating to a very localized region in the country. And it began in the turkey region in minnesota as far as the midwestern component is concerned. And i know that usda deployed people up there quickly, by time it hit in iowa, my numbers are 47 turkey locations were positive before it spilled over into two turkey locations in iowa. And then from there it hit the large laying operation near harris, iowa. Thats when i think it became such a large epidemic that it was for a time out of control. So i wanted to speak with you about the things that need to be prepared for another event that may happen. And the focus on the east coast im glad to see that here is very appropriate that they do that. But the resources that youve had, i think you testified here that they are at least adequate to this moment. And im happy to be supportive if you need more resources. I would want to bring to your attention some of the things like like the Emergency Response component of this the level of urgency that i thought i should have seen more in line with a flood or Natural Disaster or hurricane, perhaps tornadoes too small a magnitude for this. I thought the level of of a magnitude for this. I thought that level of urgency should have been higher. The chain of command so we know what that order of command is and who we can community with. Maybe look tts corps of engineers approach on how they bring a lot of resources into play under a military style command so there can be a quicker response. You mentioned the disposal. That is a biggest problem. It was the biggest problem from the beginning. Im very troubled by what we had to do and some of that is composting birds outside. An attempt to cover them with sawdust or corn silver, but still exposed to birds that can carry that disease elsewhere. There are a number of epidemiological studies that is at this point not completely complete. It is going to be, i think, the key to how we bring biosecurity to bear which might well be the key to how we set up something maybe under rma for an income interruption type of insurance for our producers. Not only the turkey people but especially the layers. So there are a lot of components of this that i would like to weigh in on. I should write a series of open opeds on this and have a talk or is there a better method so that we can convey if the next disaster pray that it doesnt that i can be in a position to see can be implemented for solutions. I think the first stop is any ideas you have come to the meeting in iowa and share them which is designed to get people to discuss this openly and fully, number one. Number two, i agree with you in terms of the instant command process. Thats why we are setting up a much different system. I agree with you disposal is an issue. Its not dictated just by the federal folks. He seat folks are involved local folks are involved and landfill people are involved. That is why i instructed our team to begin to think about where this could potentially happen in states that have not yet been hit. Where in landfills can we begin having discussions now to acquire them with what this is all about, why its not a risk for them to participate in disposal, disposal issues, absolutely. No question thats an issue and thats why were looking at ways in which we can do a better job of that. The study is going to be supplemented, i think, by next week. We may learn additional steps in terms of biosecurity and i think longterm the issue of a Disaster Program or Insurance Program makes an awful lot of sense. So theres an awful lot of work thats been done, going to be done. If you have input, id be more than happy to receive it next week. Thank you. Mr. Labafa for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And thank you, secretary bill for being so available to this committee and to faithfully coming as often as you do. Its appreciated. I just wanted to follow up on previous talks in the past about californias drought situation and emergency or relief funding that was made available which was announced february of 2014. And intended for Emergency Assistance in the drought period. So actually it was in response to 2013 drought and so we still have additional years of on top of that. We just need some more help with the state fsa offices on getting that out there because weve had only a handful that have actually been issued of drought relief funds that have been processed. We have and i have the email from one of the state staff here that shows that theres still outstanding 180 applications of an initial 5. 4 million that was approved in an account and theres at least 3. 9 million still remaining in that same reserve that needs to be disbursed in response to the 2013. So were here in 2015 and for those that really need that, they must be having a lot of answers here having to provide their bankers, etcetera. Can you help us with whatever its going to take to expedite in 2015 asap to get those additional of those 180 appear applicants, get those out and the remainder of those funds, get those disbursed, please . Congressman, as a result of your efforts, were prioritizing the county because of your concerns. Part of the challenge that we have is that its not just our office. We work and have to work through the state of californias rules and regulations. Theres a Cultural Resource review, a tribal preservation officer that are involved in reviewing these projects. It depends on even for something as simple as the disbursement of funds . Yes, yes. It is california. The producer has to basically submit their receipts and then he is essentially reimbursed for 75 of the work. So were we will do what we can. We understand how important this is. Thats why we allocated Additional Resources in 2014. Why we just recently announced Additional Resources in 2015. Thank you. We understand the problem. All right. Can we work with you on finding ways to where youve run into roadblocks to be able to move those hurdles . Sure. This should not have any cultural effect. Theres no reason to have this held up. Im not pointing at you, sir. Just the other end of the process. If we can hem us find that, it doesnt have that negative effect and need all that review. Is that reasonable . Yes, it is. And just to follow up on one of my previous questions, talked about the waters v. United states ruling on the epa. To the other side of that, if the usda were to identify a wetland that the corps or whoever have not identified, what would that mean for farmers and ranchers . Would that make those wetlands identified as uca a clean water act wetland, too, do you think . Congressman, i apologize. I just dont have the information and knowledge to be able to answer your question accurately or adequately. But i have obviously been asked this question by you and variations of it by other members of the committee. Im certainly happy to go back and ask our team to brief me on this and get me up to speed on precisely how best to answer. I appreciate it. The United States waters are a moving target, too. Maybe if we can anticipate a this some of these things woernt happen. Go ahead, sir. I agree with you that its a moving target and it may very well take a political process and a judge at some point in time to figure it out. But i apologize that im not able to answer your question. So thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman, i yield back. The gentleman yields back. My boss five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman thank you, mr. Secretary. My questions are pretty short. First let me apologize for not being at the start. It was between you and the secretary of va. Who gets it first. The question that i have, and its because my district right now sometimes you hear around this nation where people are lack of water, lack of water, lack of water, well, we would like to send some to them. And im just kind of wondering because i know our governor from the state of illinois is applying for a disaster declaration. How are you prepared and how does that process work for our farms that are just devastated from the flooding that were experiencing right through the corn belt . Well, if the governor is asking for sectarial designation, it comes through our process and we try to respond to it as quickly as we can. We know that then gives us the capacity to make emergency loans more readily available, those kinds of things. I would be happy to take a look at it. I dont know if weve received it yet. Its my instruction to our team to take care of this as quickly as possible. Ill be happy to take a look at it. My staff has been working with them. Its our hope we can move rather quickly. The other question i have, i know youre talking about implementing new Information Technology and that type of programs out there. Would any of that reduce and or shut down any of our Service Centers by the does it centralize it or do we still have our centers in the field or is there any well, it should reduce the amount of busy work and paperwork and is already actually doing that in terms of reducing the amount of staff time. In the past what would happen is if you came into an fsa office and you needed information, literally paper records would have to be pulled. That obviously takes time. Now, thats no longer the situation. You can call it up on the screen pretty quickly. Over a longer period of time as we continue this youll eventually if you have access to broadband you can access a lot of that information your conservation stuff is already accessible at home. Clearly, thats going to reduce the amount of time thats been spent in the past on those issues. Now, what weve attempted to do is to try to plan for that by creating a process in which offices will become more than what they have been in the past without minimizing what they do which is important in their relationship with farmers. We would like to see them be a provider of information about other usda programs that might assist the farmer that may not be an nrcs program or may not be a farm loan program, but they could be a marketing programs. Were in the process of creating pilots around the country to see whether the offices can be amenable about this whether they can learn enough about our rural programs to say to a farmer, hey, have you ever thought about this value added opportunity . Have you ever thought about this cooperative opportunity . As way of creating additional responsibilities, Additional Information that will allow them to maintain their legitimacy and their relevance. There are issues relative to this structure that we have today. In my view, there are 31 offices today in fsa that have no full Time Employee in them. But i cannot close those offices because congress has directed me not to close any office. So when you basically say to me operate it like a business i say fine. Then tell me that i cant close 31 offices that have no full time people in them. You have to ask the questions is that really operating it like a business . Thank you. I yield back. Gentleman yields back. Mr. Thompson, five minutes. Chairman, thank you so much. Mr. Secretary, good to see you. Good to see you. I wanted to touch base basically on the issue of the ad1026s and new conservation compliance requirements that we have in the farm bill. And the chief and we had a conversation on that. So i wanted to follow up on that. I have some continuing concerns. I know the department and the agency has talked about the need to have that form. But i do have concerns that the fall is going to come and the bill is going to come due and there are maybe some farmers or ranchers kind of surprised because they missed it. Whether it was livestock or perhaps specialty crops, some folks that this may be somewhat new to and any idea of those did or did not complete the ad1026 statistics i can cite to you 98. 1 of producers that might think about this actually signed up and got their form on file. We estimate its roughly 10,000 folks who potentially from prior records may be impacted. Of that number, some of them are no longer farming. Some of them are no longer around. So that number is going to be significantly reduced by the time its all said and done. Congressman, we really made an effort. Every press release that went out about this, six months in advance made reference about that june 1 date. We worked with the companies to make phone calls, to send emails. There was an aggressive comprehensive effort and i think thats why you saw as many people sign up. At the end of the day, there may well be a handful of folks that just didnt get it done. But i think on balance, we did the best we could with a firm date that was set in law. Is there any do you have any flexibility at this point . And im glad to hear that that was the number i had heard, too, 10,000. As you said, some of those may not be farming today. They may be choosing not to just go down that route in terms of crop insurance. But i mean, im just curious, any tools that you may have as we get closer to that and we see that people start to discover that theyre just not going to be in compliance, therefore, their premiums may not take it out of range in terms of whats affordable in terms of managing the risk . I dont know if we provide you with any flexibility in the final hour. We are sending out letters now to the handful of folks that may, as you say, be surprised when they find out. Those letters started going out july 22nd. I guess today. They go out today. Well begin hearing soon i suspect from folks. Ive been told we dont have any flexibility. Im happy to go back and ask that question one more time. But i dont think we have much of thats why i was so insistent on a massive effort to make sure that everybody knew the june 1 date was coming up. I cant tell you how many interviews i gave about that, how many times i mentioned it. We did everything we could to get that information as personal as to people. I think youve done a good job. I think the department has done a great job of pushing that information out. So i look forward to keeping in contact with you as we get closer to that date just to see how we did in the end. Fair enough. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, i yield back. The gentlemans time the gentleman yields back. Mr. Abraham for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here. I representative northeast louisiana. The problem we had coming up, it goes back to how generic based acres are former cotton acreage are divided among farmers. For some reason, the fsa has decided to divide up Generic Base Acres differently than how the agency divides up the regular base acres. I know this is a problem throughout the south. The chairman in the great state of texas is running into the same obstacle. In the division of the regular base acres, it makes perfect sense. I still farm actively too. Simply follow the rental agreement on the farm. But for Generic Base Acres, instead of simply dividing up generic base in the same way in accordance with the agreement as recorded in the fsas 578 form. Ive looked into that and ran into that on my farm. So the issue is confusion, but the upside is the fsas new way of dividing a generic base on the producers on the farm results in a lot of inequities where farm bill payments are going to be paid to actually the wrong farmers. Some farmers will be seriously short changed while other farmers will receive more than they should actually windfalls in some cases in my district. So this is especially problematic. Rental agreements and loans have been made on the way regular acres have been allocated. I think the best way to resolve the problem is have the generic base divided like the regular base. I guess my question is will you work with me especially those that want to convert these cotton acres into rice farms as we move forward and try to fix this problem. We need some help in the south on that. Congressman, i need some help myself. At one point in time, i could answer that question because it was in my head. But its not in my head. Can i ask sure you can. And you can get back to me. Whatever i just you know, i need to, i guess, ensure our farmers that this is a fixable problem. Because right now, these base acres, these Generic Base Acres, theyre just theyre not being very allocated productively from my rice farmers, especially. Congressman, i absolutely commit to you that our team will get in touch with your folks. And thats all i ask. I dont want to mislead you in terms of whether or not its a solvable problem. It may or may not be. Right now, im having a hard time calling it up. As long as we can have a conversation, then im good. Always. One other question in this and ill yield back. On the Inspector Generals recommendation, it included having a third party, nongovernment entity review of the midas program to determine whether its the most executivive i. T. Fix or not. Where is the status of that recommendation from the attorney general . I mean the Inspector General . As far as you guys are concerned, are you all taking that to heart . Are you utilizing it . What stage is it in . Were attempting to follow all the recommendations that the oag provided. Do you think that a thirdparty entity needs to come in in light of the gao and the midas program problems. Im not sure that would be helpful. Certainly, at the time that this is reviewed and the time that these problems occurred, essentially thats what we did by bringing in somebody from the outside. I brought in jonathan who is now our cio. I brought him in from the outside and said, take a look at this. He came back and he basically said, here are the problems that you have. Youve got a disconnect between some of your career folks in kansas city and some of your folks in d. C. You have an old system that people are trying to cobble together. And youve actually this is a fairly aggressive effort. We need to break this down into incremental parts and do in this a more thoughtful way in terms of bringing this stuff online. As a result of bringing him outside looking at this he became the project manager. He began meeting with me on a weekly basis and i think were in a much better place today. In that sense, we did bring somebody in from the outside. I dont know if it was an outside entity, but its certainly somebody who knew what he was talking about and i think as long as theres progress. Thank you. I yield back, mr. Chairman. The gentleman yields back. Before we adjourn i ask the Ranking Member if he has any Closing Remarks he may have . Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to just thank the secretary, again, for his forthright answers today and doing a good job as you normally does. Also thank him and dr. Clifford and others at the department for their response to the problems. We went through probably one of the toughest times that ive ever seen with this Avian Influenza situation. You know, people were pretty down in the mouth at one point. But i met with a number of people on saturday and their attitude has changed. Part of that, i think, is because of your efforts and dr. Cliffords and others in terms of listening and responding. And that has helped restore confidence in the industry, as well. And in your response today, to the questions, i think you hit on the things that my producers were concerned about and what that means is that youve been listening and, you know, we dont have any all the answers, any of us. But we are going to try to boil down a hundred different ideas out there about how to boil that down to a few, bring it to this meeting were having next week. I think it was next week. Yes. And, again, just thank you for what youve done and what youre doing and we look forward to working with you and appreciate your thank you, congressman. The meeting is on tuesday, next week, in des moines. Okay. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Yield back. The gentleman yields back. Mr. Secretary, i had one real quick followup on the suspension. Can you bring the civil suit . Can the i guess does it have to be justice do that . Its justice everything that we do in terms of a legal action gets okay. I appreciate your comments earlier about wanting to expand perhaps a that issue about what is subject to debarment because my legal staff showed me there is under that regulation 180 whatever, that there are some steps beyond just civil and criminal things that can lead to allowing you to present somebody for debarmint and suspension. There are. However, as it relates to the situation were talking about here, those dont necessarily necessarily apply. They are very specific. There is a process where you could amplify on that list. That would create more flexibility. And i think the idea, mr. Chairman, is, frankly, create some kind of due process mechanism by which there is a determination that there was wrongdoing so that you dont get in a situation where i make a judgment about somebody and they come in and they go, well, that was a poor judgment or you did it because you didnt like the guy. Right. Mr. Secretary, i think you and i are in agreement with each other on what needs to be done with respect to that, so i appreciate that. Oversight is not all that pleasant from time to time. Many of these investigations take a long time to get done. Some of the things were talking about are several years old. That doesnt lessen the impact it has on the American Peoples trust and confidence in all of us that congress is doing its job, that youre doing the job you need to do to protect those scarce resources that all of us have. But i hope we can have your commitment to continue to work with us on all of these oversight issues. Your team has been working really well. I was hoping we wouldnt make you so mad this morning that you decided to bail out on us on that deal. We have some legitimate things that we want to understand and know. You have certain equities and we have equities and having your team work with us, i appreciate that and we dont devolve into a mud fight thats unnecessary. I really appreciate what you guys have done to date. One other thing, there was another thing talked about in these grants are made to ngos or other organizations, making sure that youve got the proper internal controls in place that they then spend the money the way theyre supposed to and that they dont, you know, overpay themselves, all those kinds of good stuff. There a variety of ways that not super material to the 177 billion that you guys oversee every year in expenditures. Out of your testimony, thats a sizable number and the number transactions are daunting and were only talking about a few of those. But those few, as i mentioned earlier, are tainted water. So i appreciate you being here this morning. Under the rules of the committee and were getting you out of here right on time. Under the rules of the committee, the record of todays hearing will remain open for ten calendar days, supplement additional responses to my questions posed by a member. This hearing is adjourned. Thank you, tom. Next treasury secretary jack lew on the annual Trustees Report for Social Security and medicare. After that president ial candidates hillary clinton, jeb bush, Bernie Sanders ben carson and Martin Omalley speak at the urban league convention. Then fcc chairman at a House Oversight hearing on the commission. The republican president ial candidates are in man dhefter, New Hampshire for the voters first president ial forum today at 7 00 p. M. Eastern and cspans road to the white house is providing live coverage on cspan cspan radio and cspan organize. The New Hampshire union leader is sponsoring this forum. Following the live forum you can provide your input by joining our call in program or adding your comments on facebook and twitter. Road to the white house 2016 on cspan cspan radio and cspan. Org