Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page.
ACTUALITIES – Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Testifies On Budget and Farm Bill
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack testified to the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on proposed cuts to the USDA budget and the Farm Bill.
New actualities are available on the USDA FTP site
Filename: vilsack test52611
Download instructions:
The host: ftp://ocbmtcmedia.download.akamai.com
User name: usdanews
Password: Newscontent1
The new file is in QuickTime Movie (H.264 ), MPEG 4, MPEG2 and HDV.
Please email bob.ellison@xxxxxxxx if you have problems or suggestions.
Also, use this free ftp client if you have problems.
http://filezilla-project.org/download.php?type+client
ACTUALITIES – Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Testifies To U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee On Proposed Budget Cuts and The Farm Bill
(5-26-11)
INFO: Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack testified to the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on proposed cuts to the USDA budget and the Farm Bill.
Cut 1-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack responding to a statement about crop insurance being a financial safety net for producers. (:27)
The reality is though that you have to couple that, it seems to me, with a disaster program that recognizes that as good as crop insurance can be there are circumstances and situations where it’s not enough or there are extraordinary catastrophic circumstances that we’re seeing in the nine states that have been hit very, very hard recently in the South and in the central part of the country, where we need to basically have a way in which we can provide additional assistance.
Cut 2-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack responding to statement on how valuable American farmers and ranchers are to the nation. (:14)
Roughly two hundred thousand producers in this country produce eighty five percent of what we consume. I challenge anybody in the country to show me two hundred thousand folks who have contributed more to the American economy and more to the American nation.
Cut 3-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says USDA has made large budget sacrifices over the years. (:22)
We’ve been flat-lined for thirty years. The Defense Department hasn’t been flat-lined, Health and Human Services hasn’t been flat-lined, science and technology hasn’t been flat-lined, Transportation hasn’t been flat-lined. And I’m not taking anything away from all of those; they’re very important. But when you look at our numbers and then you look at that chart, it’s hard to make the case that somehow agriculture can give more.
Cut 4- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack USDA has taken a disproportionate share of the budget cuts. (:47) (Refers to Sen. Mike Johanns, who sits on Senate Agriculture Committee and served as U.S. Agriculture Secretary from 2005-2007)
USDA has taken a disproportionate share of the cuts. And we are now at a place where I have had a very serious conversation with all of the under secretaries. I suspect that Senator Johanns knows what those conversations are kind of like, where you essentially say look we’re looking at potentially a twenty-five to thirty percent cut in our discretionary budget that means we really have to think about what we can do as well as what we can’t do. One area in particular is in the research area. You know at a time when we ought to be out-innovating and out-building and out-educating as the President calls for us to be competitive, we’re reducing our commitment to research at a time when we should be looking at ways that we can leverage and increase our commitment to research.
Cut 5- Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says he hopes lawmakers will consider the importance of agriculture and USDA when considering the budget. (:33)
I have no doubts that the next farm bill will be smaller than the one that was agreed upon in Two Thousand Eight. In acknowledging that reality I hope that this committee will give serious thought to your priorities for American agriculture and your priorities for USDA and to the values of the American people. We at USDA are prepared to do as much as we can with fewer resources, but there is no doubt that cuts will have a real impact on American agriculture and on American people. There will be pain and everyone will have to sacrifice something.
