addition to the budget process the purpose of this hearing is to follow in the first panel we want to discuss both u s d a s two thousand and eight budget request and u s d a s proposals for reauthorizing the farm bill that expires at impact important programs or provide valuable services to our communities for example msec care we would like to explore if you in greater detail your proposals for the department's food nutrition programs we're likewise interested in understanding how your proposals will impact rural communities which many of us represent such as your proposed changes and they were allows in program because the farm bill is expiring this year we're given a significant opportunity to improve how your proposal would reform the farm bill we're particularly interested in discussing with you u s d a s proposals in the commodity conservation and nutrition titles of your bill this may consistencies with your budget request for two thousand and eight also that members might wish to explore we have a second panel and we will share with all the second panel from two guests who have taken the problem tackle the problem head on poverty in their communities of hunger in their communities according to the u s d a in two thousand and five thirty four million americans were food insecure nearly eleven million were hungry went to bed hungry six hundred her days treating poor children suffering from malnutrition and her boston clinic another part of the state another part of the country but still no part of the country escapes this problem than the fallen is the executive director of the harvest hope food buying which provides food for one hundred forty nine thousand people in central soccer alone on who otherwise would have to do without i look forward to hearing from both witnesses dr frank ambers holland about the real people who they are trying to help our family farmers across the nation is certainly true in my home state of wisconsin where agriculture is a fifty one billion dollar industry in our state's economy and in my district where we contribute heavily to the nation's output of dairy corn soybeans to big issue where i come from that said there is no question that these programs can be reformed and improved a better the needs of the family farmer not only do we need to make these programs more cost effective we need to do a better job of allocating resources from these programs to those who actually need them i don't believe that we should be sending federal support checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars to any one farmer who's probably pretty well off already that was never the point of these programs we've got to ensure that we're focusing this assistance to helping the family farmer who for reasons completely outside of their control whether disease pest damages cetera are going to run into trouble every now and then those are the people these programs were intended to help in the first place along these lines i am pleased to see in the president's budget proposal t farm program assistance one of the main provisions of this plan would be to prepare the commodity program subsidies to producers who are among the top two point three percent of american farmers with adjusted gross income above two hundred thousand or more i'll support the president's proposal to update the financial instruments that are available to family farmers and finally i believe we should return to a freedom to farm model which allows our nation's farmers to make their own production decisions without interference from the federal government there are a lot of ideas out there on how farm programs can be improved and i think we need to have those discussions the key is to ensure that we are helping those who actually need help or at the same time providing enough freedom flexibility for farmers to respond to the ever changing marketplace and run their farms as they see fit i work for this upcoming debate on the reauthorization farm bill and this process will come through the budget committee so this is something that each and every one of us in the budget committee are going to be mindful of and hopefully we can help shape this this committee and to all the members i look forward to your questions what i would like to do is provide the committee at the outset here with an overview of the department's programs and maybe a few highlights from the two thousand and eight budget request i will begin though by providing a a brief overview of the two thousand and seven farm bill proposed proposals that we announced on january thirty first  doing so i will be better able to explain how the farm bill in the budget fit together so starting with the zero seven farm bill proposals the zero seven farm bill proposals and the two thousand and eight budget were developed on parallel tracks it ministrations farm bill proposals represent the final phase of what it's been nearly a two year process we listen closely to producers and stakeholders all across the country and took a reform minded in a fiscally responsible approach to making foreign policy more equitable more predictable and project protected from challenge in the world trade arena while i firmly believe that the current law was the right policy for the times times to change and they have changed when the o two farm bill was passed commodity prices were low exports had declined for several years in a row and the debt to asset ratio on agriculture was right at fifteen percent now today we just see a vastly different economic picture commodity prices are strong for most program crops exports have set records now several years in a row including record sixty eight billion in zero six and projections are that we will reach another record this year seventy seven billion dollars we are experiencing the lowest debt to asset ratio in recorded history we've never been at this level before that about eleven percent in two thousand and six add to all of this the enormous impact on renewable that renewable energy has had on our aca kaname and it's pretty clear times have changed the time has come to move forward with a proper farm program that is market oriented and considers more than commodity prices alone when the terminating the appropriate level of governmental support our farm bill proposals bolster this administration's commitment to conservation programs that protect our natural resources that would be an increase of seven point eight billion dollars over the ten year score president's goal of reducing annual gasoline use by by by ten percent in ten years re proposed funding to support one point six billion dollars in loans to rehabilitate more than twelve hundred rural critical access hospitals another four hundred million dollars would be focused on trade in making sure our producers have a level playing field in the global market these are just a few high i lights i could i could do a couple of hours on these proposals i won't do that but when combined we the proposals would spend about ten billion less than was spent in the zero two farm bill over the past five years excluding adhoc disaster assistance importantly they uphold the president's plan to eliminate the deficit in five years on the other hand looking forward our proposals would provide about fifty five billion more than the projected mandatory were just simply extended and this comment brings me to our budget proposal the two thousand and eight budget accommodates our farm bill proposal proposals and here's how it is done it includes an additional five hundred million per year in the total for the commodity credits corp this if you will is a placeholder in the budget and it would be spread over the various titles for the bill this level extended for ten years would cover the full estimated cost of the proposals the president so we budget funds our highest priorities was exercising the kind of fiscal discipline that is necessary to achieve the goal of strengthening the economy and balancing the budget by two thousand and twelve before i present the highlights let me take a moment to explain how u s d a expenditures are divid a outlays are estimated to total about eighty nine billion dollars in two thousand and eight that would be roughly the same level for two as for two thousand and seven of the total outlays for the department fifty nine percent fifty nine percent support domestic nutrition assistance programs spending for farm and commodity programs although we're probably best known for that account for about nineteen percent of our budget conservation and forestry account for about eleven percent and the remaining eleven percent represents a whole host of other programs from role development to research the food safety animal and plant health international programs and administration another way to look at our budget is the breakdown between the mandatory side and the discretionary side for the weight mandatory outlays represent seventy five percent of the departments total discretionary programs account for about twenty five percent mandatory outlays are actually dominated by a few programs nutrition assistance programs including food stamp and child nutrition programs actually account for seventy six percent of our mandatory outlays for two thousand and eight farm programs funded by c c c and crop insurance account for about twenty twenty four percent of our mandatory outlays funding for nutrition assistance programs has grown from about sixty percent of our mandatory spending in ninety nine nine hundred ninety nine to seventy six percent in two thousand and eight during the same time period total spending on farm programs has declined from about forty percent to twenty four percent of the mandatory spending farm program spending through c c c is a very highly variable it's it reflects impacts of weather and changes in commodity markets as well as emergency spending that may be allowed to address natural and economic disasters the dramatic increase in ethanol production has significantly increase the demand for corn and what that does of course is that pushes corn prices higher this is expected to significant only reduced c c c outlays in the next few years both the administration and the congressional budget office january baselines for c c c show this  effect we're not really in much disagreement there c c c outlays are estimated to continue at an average of twelve point four billion from all the way to two thousand and seventeen under a simple extension of the current law mandatory cost of the crop insurance program are estimated to be five billion in overweight which is roughly double the level of ten years ago these costs are expected to grow roughly two percent a year from  seventeen turning now to our food and nutrition programs the always budget fully funds the expected requirements of food stamps and child and nutrition programs total outlays for the these programs are expected to continue to increase by about four percent a year over the next several years due to inflation in changing demographics to the nation most significantly an increase in school age population although no program changes are sought for the child nutrition programs a number of legislative changes are proposed for two thousand and eight to improve access to food stamps as well as target them to those most in need around the discretionary side of the ledger outlays for u s d a s two thousand and eight discretionary budget are estimated to be about twenty two billion about the same level as so seven and i might add the same level as ost six the zero eight budget for discretionary programs reflects the president's priorities to encourage economic growth increase our security while recognizing that cisco discipline is absolutely necessary the budget request the resource as necessary to protect the food supply in agriculture from a variety of threats that could have a devastating effect on animal and human health this includes increased monitoring and s e a new record level of funding is also requested for meat poultry and a product inspection another priority for the department is the continued focus on expanding renewable energy resources funding for research that will improve cellulosic ethanol production and conversion of biomass into biofuels is increased in addition our role development programs to encrease the amount of financial support available to leverage private sector funding for small and large scale renewable energy generation activities the budget also reflects the resources necessary to meet the requirements of the neediest in our nation it supports average monthly participant participation of eight point three million participants in the wic program women infant in shouldering an increase of one hundred thousand participants per month over two thousand and seven also providing fifteen billion billion enrolled development loans grants and other assistance for rural america the department will continue to foster environmental stewardship by providing conservation techno cost farmers and ranchers and landowners the budget also includes four billion in mandatory spending for the department's major conservation efforts which will support a record cumulative enrollment of two hundred fifteen million acres in the various conservation program the budget for the forest service provides sufficient wildlife fire resources to protect communities and natural resources and provides for sustainable forests and communities through full funding of the northwest forest plan and continuation of the payments to states program we made difficult choices to keep spending under control while funding our priorities and balancing the budget the  includes proposals to terminate that low priority or duplicative or pull the poorly performing programs let me just wrap up and say look forward to working with congress on the always budget i also look forward to working with congress on crafting new farm policy were eager to ensure appropriate level of funding is made available to strengthen u s agriculture and rural america with that i will conclude my statements and all of us here at the table  look forward to answering your questions the six you touched upon the so called baseline for mandatory programs the baseline based upon current expenditures is going to be and frankly in the house whether or not we have a pay go application in existence to mean that certain things will be provided for how confident are you that the based on we're working with this year is a firm reliable number given the fact that it is based upon commodity prices that are at historic lows mr chairman we we are confident that baseline and here's what i would offer in that regard and i might even ask if you don't mind for dr collins to offer a thought we'll be spending a lot of time in the months ahead talking about baseline for this farm bill the reason why the baseline is that the lower the level that it is is very straightforward commodity prices are high we look at our carryover in all of the other information that we looking at in terms of making projections about prices and when it's all said and done there isn't going to be that much difference between us and we're see below is that we all have to start from someplace we started trying to figure this all out as we were thinking about our farm bill proposals because we had to have a number you're going to go through pretty much the same process and then again i think when it's all said and done there's not going to be a lot of disagreement about our baseline dr collins my offer a thought on commodity prices but i'm confident telling you on i think we're at that baseline that i think it's a good baseline mr chairman as you all know and members know baselines are both art and science they've been very variable over the years at the department of agriculture we followed the convention of the congressional budget office starting last year and we started using quote stochastic or probabilistic baselines that alone adds a couple of billion dollars as kind of a cushion to our baseline spending we went in that direction because we felt that just picking one specific scenario of prices and costing out based on that was a little too unreliable nevertheless we are using one specific scenario of prices high corn prices as you mentioned but we do provide a probability distribution around that and estimate outlays based on a number of alternative outcomes i would say coming on the secretary's point if you look at our tenure score for commodity programs it's only the most sensitive in the most expensive commodity program we have lower corn cost in the congressional budget office because of the high demand for ethanol but we have we offset that with much higher cotton costs and that's mainly the difference between our two baselines in some the aggregate total is very very similar the budget that you sent us includes five hundred million dollars a year of the timeframe of the budget is this largely to expenditure excuse me the increase in budget authority that we expect our proposals would result in over ten years that's five billion dollars over ten years so we anywise that immediate five hundred million dollars in put that in our budget as a placeholder so that's the concept there is is budget authority five hundred million dollars in two thousand and eight reflective of all i finals of the bill for all titles of the bill yes sir this is impact over five years is about four hundred eighty nine million dollars small towns in the room sao two in charlotte north carolina columbia south carolina i've got all the small towns and rural communities and frankly your rural development administration has been a godsend in these towns they provide financing funding that otherwise is simply not attainable they don't have the credit rating the standing the capacity to repay and better both for specter rural development and rural housing these programs are critically important this i heard no negative comments about a rural development programs and i literally went through all of my forums not a single negative comment if anything people were lining up to say this is doing a great job for my community or my county so they're very popular let me approach this in a couple of ways one is that from the standpoint of the zero eight budget the always budget includes about fourteen billion dollars for rural development programs this is essentially the same level as two thousand and seven the entire fifteen million will be directed into those roll roll programs it may be job opportunities that could be a variety of things the always budget includes four point eight billion for single family housing to support homeownership opportunities one point five billion for water and wastewater disposal loans and grants six hundred ninety million for telecommunications four point one billion for law actually clones and i could go on and on but then going on to our farm bill proposal we're proposing some things that we heard about when we were out there doing the forums and things we're very excited by for example we have in this country about twelve hundred in eighty three rural critical access hospitals that really need to be brought up to standard we are proposing to fund a one point six billion dollars loan program so all of these hospitals can be rehabilitated and these are and most rural areas of our country and will submit for the record a list of the states and the number of hospitals we're also proposing additionally new money if you will to use that terminology five hundred million dollars additional to try to deal with the backlog of waste water and waste disposal systems and other rural infrastructure we think this would do conservatively bring that backlog down by thirty percent maybe more and this was done in the o two farm bill it's something we're continuing here that would be in addition to the other programs we're doing we're doing about five hundred million for renewable energy and energy efficiency grants to two hundred ten million in budget authority to support loans for this purpose so i guess what i would say to you mr chairman if you can if you look not only at the budget which is about the same or was had in zero seven but looking at some of the things we are doing in terms of our proposals you can see we have a very streamlining and consolidating do you really think you can save an amount of money and srimad and can consult vague and still have as much money to use for actual grants and loans part of our farm bill proposals for example or to do some streamlining and and just a better job of delivering these programs that those are things that we just felt obligated to do how can we manage the program better more efficiently and therefore get money to people who really needed out there in rural areas i could keep going i mean i could hock about some of the things we're doing in terms of targeting funding for cellulosic ethanol that is very clearly going to help areas much like corn based ethanol has helped in the corn belt so there are a lot of exciting things in our proposal although i think make a lot of sense have a lot of support from farmers and stakeholders out there as we did our farm  forms say talk to us about these things i could go on and on and we have a six change section five fifteen for example a lot of these section numbers stand out to me because i've seen the very projects that represent the  just want to commend you for putting milk on an equal playing field with the other commodities that expired before the other programs in the farm bill did that to me seems like an unfair thing and the fact that you put milk in your budget tells me that we're going to treat milk fairly like we do the other commodities then let's get on the business of reforming all of these commodity programs on an equal playing field so i just want to commend you for that number one i want to ask you about the  quotas in the president's state of the union address he recommended in correct me if i'm wrong going from the current seven point five billion gallon quota by two thousand and twelve to thirty five billion gallons by twenty seventeen and that something dramatic happened that's why in our farm bill proposals were you are targeting proposing to target the funding that cellulosic development how soon or how well developed is ethanol technology such that it can contribute to reaching that quota i've been surprised at how far along it is i think many people including myself have been saying sometime within the five next five years this will be efficient cost effective production but having said that companies come to my office and talk about being ready to build a cellular sick plant i know that there are companies working with the department of energy for grants so i'm very optimistic based upon what they're telling me based upon the research that's going on there but very clearly  the point here is you've got to develop that industry to reach those goals it can't all come from corn it's not possible actually the woodchipping wisconsin's a big forestry industry in that the wood said last it looks like it's fairly promising but having  all that pretty much the only game in town right now is corn and the big talk that i hear in you know wisconsin is in the past the conservation people along with the corn and beans people all of got along with each other and so now you're seeing your start you're beginning to see some friction between the priorities of conservation you know c r p things like that and these ethanol programs and i think there's a concern out there that you're going to see one displaced the other because of these quotas because of these prices would you care to comment on that and give me your prediction we share that concern you know we support have you have corn prices that are in the vicinity of four dollars so that means that the input costs for that theory farmer has basically doubled relative to corn very very quickly but having said that here's kind of our best read on the situation very definitely there's a period of adjustment going on and i think that's going to last for the next twelve to twenty four months those those high corn prices are doing what the market tends to do they are causing more farmers to make a decision about moving acreage from some other commodity indeed corn we certainly have some flex there if you look at for example soybeans we grew the largest crop ever last year we have the largest carry over ever so you literally would have some flex it is it is possible that some of the conservation contracts coming up maybe somebody a look at that to say well i had it in conservation but it's good corn grown you know that's not going to be one for one acres and then really on a more long term basis and i'm not talking about a decade i'm talking about what i believe will be sometime in the next five years if not sooner i do think you'll see a robust cellulosic ethanol industry developed for example in and why do we have to guarantee you know that kind of a markup i was asked a similar question before the house ag committee and today the subsidy is directed at corn based ethanol and that that's concepts i think that runs until twenty ten if i'm not mistaken there may be a point in twenty zero nine or something where congress looks at this and tries to make a decision about whether that should or should not continue if we have questions wrong but it's sort of a triple layer of incentives there's a tariff a fifty four cents a gallon subsidy and then the quote on top of it the production quota those are sort of the three the big three incentives  all of those necessary now given that we've got this new quote on top to foster this kind of production and if we're going to go to a thirty five billion gallon quota of just domestic wouldn't it make good sense to allow some imports in it if we're literally don't have enough you know ground to plant the stuff on i mean do we need all three of these incentive programs to make this industry vibrant in work and look i come from corn country but nevertheless i think it's idea that you're talking about the answer question is this three years ago if you read articles about ethanol you'd probably be reading well it survive it's been around a long time i ethanol production has been around a long time but not very efficiently not very effectively not very cost effective that's changed very quickly here in yes admittedly the last couple of years have been good years for the ethanol industry we like to see that congress has made a policy choice that until twenty ten that support should be there and that support will help the industry and help the industry stabilize and there's a lot of other good purposes and less dependence on foreign oil i don't know why remember last century so we sit here today not taking issue with that policy choice we have not proposed any changes in any of those items that you mention like i said in our proposal though we say let's focus on silos six of them all corn based ethanol is doing pretty well here let's focus on cellulosic so our dollars are relate directed at that somewhere out there long after this sector has gone congress may look at that policy and say we can make adjustments here but for the time being  succeeded to the level now where it's mature enough to sort of stand on its own or to better stand on its own or not i don't you just basically answer that question but i think that's a question we need to think i just want to finish with one quick question maybe back on track now i mean you hear the stuff you know one day dole was dead the next day it revived the latest from we had over the ways and means committee ambassador schwab here yesterday who said you know doha meet we may have a chance to doha again and i hope we do  the e u commissioner for agriculture fisher barrel i think i think i'm pronouncing that correctly has complained that this new farm bill proposal is contradictory toward doha i'm not sure that he's correct specially when you try and making doha work yeah i read those comments in fact when when marianne fisher bowl was here in washington i took the opportunity to meet with her and she had a lot of questions about the farm bill and interestingly enough after our meeting she made a comment that she thought it was a better farm ville i was asked a similar question yesterday near the end of the testimony by  goodlatte before the house had committee and i said this i we want more market access from the european union they also have very high subsidies that need to come down and i'll just be very candid in my  response i think they were trying to talk our proposal down that's just my personal opinion of it there is no doubt that something like direct payments for example that are not tied to dollars i suppose we could have put that into something really trade distorting we didn't in our proposal in what does that mean conservation programs again are generally regarded as trade compliant green box programs so if you tick down through the list of things we're proposing although i won't tell you we wrote a farm bill based upon trade wrote a farm bill we hope based upon good policy and good for farmers and good for rural america but i do believe that this this farm bill approach makes a lot more sense in terms of the trade issue final thing i'll say it's important i don't know where every member stands and trade maybe there's some people anti trade third row of our row crops the crops you're interested in going to the export market that's changing a little bit because of ethanol but it's still a major piece of what we do and we keep setting records and selling our products overseas we're good at it we have great products so i just think you have to pay attention to that you certainly don't want to take a step back in the then the final thing this cotton case is for real we aggressively defended it we lost it was taken up on appeal we aggressively defended the appeal we lost brazil is now in saying you haven't fully complied we're going to aggressively defend that can i just filed a case against our corn program commodity that's important to your state and in canada it was joined by a whole list of other countries almost overnight i mean literally within seventy two hours canada wasn't standing alone now will aggressively defend that too but again i just think we need to pay attention we need to be mindful that for the american farmer trade is really important me try to address two areas in my time here first i just want to add in this area my comments to what the chairman spoke about terms of rural america and if i look at this project we are looking at  short changes in terms of rural development and housing programs let me just catalog for a second cut community advancement program by twenty one percent hundred twenty million dollars cut and run line waste to turn over eighty percent of their staff and business operations to a private company to i b m next month december eighteenth u s t a midwest regional office gave indiana the approval to roll out the the letter said it had lots of questions it would approve the rollout for one year two thousand and seven two thousand and seven being the key year next month the needed percent is a shift of that workforce how can we english narrative description of the certification process and that's a quote that describes what the state and i b m each would do the suggestion here is that the agency continues to be unclear question i want to understand how u s d a approves a contract in december without understanding what the state is proposing to do you've got a february letter we continue not to know whether contract compliance is with complies with the federal law how do we grant an approval without knowing the project project is going to comply with federal law it's a one point six billion dollar contract they haven't answered any questions and we've got eighty percent of the function and those services moving within the next within the next thirty days ok offer a couple thoughts on that first thing if i might just mention real development issue i think and i can go through those accounts by account or something more knowledgeable even than i am can go through them but i think part of what's happening here is that in many areas we are moving toward guaranteed loan programs versus grant programs we've been doing that for a number years that's probably not the case in all cases but i'm guessing that's a part of what you're talking about we just feel that oftentimes we get more for the dollar in those programs than just an outright grant but again we can go through those with you in terms of indiana we've had a few states not a lot that have looked at the question of how best to administer the food stamp program in indiana is one of those states the letter you're referring to i have in front of me dated february eighth two thousand and seven where our regional it ministr her our regional administrator wrote to michel roux behold flamm pronouncing that correctly at indiana family and social services and ministration and you're absolutely right said we need this information  we need to have you explained that the narrative actually it's as you know a very extensive letter it's three pages from this administrator saying explain to us these items  but the letter goes on to say that that they need the information by february twentieth because it's currently scheduled to change over i think on march nineteenth i can assure you we will pay very close attention to this i can assure you that indiana has to comply with the law the requirements and satisfy us that what they're doing is not going to jeopardize somebody who's receiving food stamps and that's how we approach this if they're not ready they're not going to be ready i mean mr secretary the example in texas has been a it's been a complete failure so much so that i believe that on a bipartisan basis the subcommittee last year said that we were not going to take further steps until in terms of of any kind of funding until we understood what was going on no hands of people thousands of people let me just say let left off of eligible people and now here we are talking about on march nineteenth and you're going to look at something on february twentieth and we have set in motion a process here which is going to take eighty percent of those services that are going to be shifted fifteen hundred people losing their job without knowing how in fact the services are going to be delivered this is a radical approach this is not a pilot program you don't deal with eighty percent on a pilot program and that it's going to be phased in and you're some impression that there's a phase and that is not accurate i think that we are in trouble i have to be honest with you i'm just troubled by the lack of oversight on what should piers to be a major major departure from service delivery on a program that we know after so many years strewth subcommittee we have worked very very hard on a bipartisan basis to make sure that the food stamp program is working and working well we are now going down a new philosophical area logical conceptual basis here about which we have prior example of failure and we appear to moving in that direction again with failure i must tell you that as an appropriator i am very caff operations in for what you all did six seven months ago in helping at least partially reopen the japanese market was certainly very important to a lot of producers in the fifth congressional district of texas could you just give me a quick update on where we are in our dealings with the japanese and fully reopening them or i'd love to thank you for your compliment the japanese market is is open to u s beef  japan immediately prior to my arrival market opened up and if you remember we had we had a problem with one of the shipments and so the market closed it took us about six months to get it back in open here's the good news the japanese consumers responded very well we're selling beef in japan faster than we can keep it on the shelves they have responded very very well here's here's the problem though twenty months is not based upon any international standard it is not acceptable to us and we need to move that forward we had an understanding with japan that for the first six months of shipment in to beef into their country we were see how things were going that six months is now expired it expired in january and now we are asking japan and really all of our trading partners to move to the international standards we're going to continue to push that issue continue to do all we can to get that market completely open based upon a why are you standards so good news beef is there  bad news is we want to sell more there we believe we can safely and under international standards they're not there yet thank you mr secretary having been on this committee for a number of  years have realized that about ninety percent of the time somebody uses the term cut what they really mean is some programs an increase quite as fast as they hoped it would be i haven't looked at the programs the gentle lady from connecticut was alluding to used the term properly but just for the record do i understand that the administration is proposing to increase food stamps been the three and a half percent child nutrition one point four and wic four point two percent of those accurate numbers that would mean i don't have those in front of me but you're right these programs have continued to grow we also fund contingencies there so if the programs grow more than anticipated we will have money to continue to do so no one's actions in federal nutritional assistance programs are being proposed for funding they we we fund whatever we believe the need is going to be and then in addition to that find funding contingency for a program to cover anything additional that may come along in just for the record although i don't know if you have this in front of you according to go and be since the administration came into office at least through zero six i see where food stamps been is eighty one percent child nutrition up thirty percent and we're twenty four percent from two thousand and one through two thousand six the same roughly accurate figures yes thank you they we have we have never been shorted in these programs the president is very supportive of these programs and so our ou assistance check in my dealings with ag producers in the fifth congressional district taxes i can do some different conclusions you deal with a lot of producers people i hear from think it's very important that we get rid of the death tax people i hear from particularly my cattle producers tell me we need to create more trade agreements so we can export some of this good texas beef i hear people say we ought to open up and warn o c s so that we can achieve greater energy dependence and bring down the cost of diesel and other fuels to power and therefore machinery so are there other proposals of the administration that would help the ag producer besides increasing the size of the federal check you know we did  farm bill forums all across the country and i did over twenty of them myself did one in texas as a matter of fact at lubbock and what i started saying about halfway through those because this is what farmers were saying to me is that good farm policy is  certainly a good farm bill but it's so much more than that good farm policies good trade policy good tax policy it's all of those things hitting on off sell on hers if you will and it makes a huge difference in terms of where agriculture is hat you know i draw comparisons between all one when we sat down arrow two to write that last farm bill and today in the real  comparisons we've set records in trade in that period of time we set records in that farm cash income i can tell you the balance sheet for agriculture never looks stronger the debt to asset roche's ratio is low the net equity is i don't know it's above one point six trillion dollars and actually our subsidies have been going down if if you make the case that it sucks these then the all time banner year for agriculture should be two thousand because we hit thirty two billion dollars in subsidies and i think you would don't have to look very far and farmers would tell you that that was not a good time in fact it was a very very difficult time so what's going on well trade wasn't very good a lot of things weren't working very well for farmers a lot of things are working well now you know i i am absolutely convinced that it is so much more than the subsidy program it is it is all of the other things and i started saying that at farm bill forums in farmers would reinforce that reinforce decided that it's a million dollars in congressional earmarks for various purposes as we do need to focus on our budget problems i'm so worried though about the efficiency of delivery of your services my understanding th the natural natural resources conservation service alone has three thousand eight hundred offices around america but true i don't have it in front of me that would not be a surprising number to me and then there's the farm service agency the rural development agencies today have an equivalent number of offices around the country it's their core located so yeah it would be very comparable i again i can get  exact numbers and would be happy to do it but that would that would definitely be in the ballpark of all these counties have farms located within them you know we went through through still are going through the issue of a offices and that is not a popular thing to go out there and propose the closing of an office as you might expect but the answer to your question is there are probably some counties out there where agriculture fairly limited at this point just simply because of urban sprawl and development and all of the things that go on we have many offices probably a third of our f s a offices have less than three employees and you're talking about programs that are hugely complex change a lot they can change in you know we have in we're asking the street people to master those programs and answer the phone and run the computer and do all of the other things mr secretary you're not an office to do the popular thing surly oh we're we're going to do everything we can to be efficient here  can you tell me what the rent is that's paid by these three thousand eight hundred offices or the cost of the offices we'd be happy to supply that i again don't have that in front of me but i'd be happy to supply it can you tell me productivity per worker like in those counties without any farms what are these people doing you know again if you have very few farms there then that's going to impact the workload obviously is there any other federal agency that ha has added to an appropriations bill as of a year ago a very specific process now that we have to go through and we are doing that i think twenty one states are or twenty two states are somewhere in the stage of getting that process done in other states will will follow that but congress has spoken to us on this and given us given us the rules by which we can engage here with these offices so if we speak too loudly enough you just go away and stop proposing closing offices that have no farms left in the county it's no that's not the case at all i mean that very clearly is not the case we have all my we look forward to your closure proposal in or can you give us a list of the offices that have no farm constituents what we can to be happy to supply whatever information you need i can tell you this  we continue to work through that congressional mandate literally state by state in yes you can look forward to hearing from us repeatedly as we work through that process and bring our ideas to us to how best to manage the system and yes in some states there are fewer offices that are going to be but we have to follow the main what matters is efficient delivery of services i agree and the i r s code is complicated too but we don't have iris field offices in every county in america even though presumably everyone is a taxpayer you know when i don't have much debate on this i think what i want to achieve it's exactly what you want to achieve and that is a more efficiently run system and we're going to work to do that i look forward to your including it in your testimony next year this could be huge if you will for one second i delighted mr kerry when you respond  that would be one point seven billion dollar increase over prior years the guaranteed loan program does have the capacity to serve families with very low incomes about thirty percent of the homeowners that are currently sir by our guaranteed load program actually have incomes that are about fifty to eighty percent of the area's medium income these are people who are quite quite for the rest have income levels in the eighty to one hundred fifteen percent so even at that level very definitely these folks are quite poor also we expect zero eight budget to provide about thirty nine thousand homeownership opportunities so i guess what i would say to you is this we have we have actually had good success with this program  in the numbers seem to back it up it seems to be operating well and we seem to be reaching out to people who really really need our help through the guaranteed loan programs so i think the u s d a is the only federal agency at this point that had anything less left of a direct loan program so what i provide you whatever you need to try to assist in your deliberations but i think this program that i actually working quite well out there going back earlier you were talking about ethanol production we talked about corn and wood chips and everything else to convert to ethanol proposals i use that as kind of a generic description but sugar cane and beets would be included in that they would benefit from this program and absolutely it's worth it if you know if you go to brazil that is that is the raw material if you will sugarcane that produces their ethanol and i've been to a plant in brazil were literally the trucks for coming in with the cane to process it into ethanol so the answer is yes i wasso tell you my personal hope is that both kenyan viets look at this as a real opportunity for the future of these industries i just think the current program is over time not going to work very well for me in fact i would argue it's hard for me to imagine it works very well even during the life or the next farm bill and that's a whole separate discussion but thank you for being here as you know i've got two questions now i'll try to get those out and let you deal with them in turn the farming community in america has a very diverse and regional flexibility in management is  critically important i'm concerned that the farm bill proposal may decrease rather than increase regional flexibility to give you an example the senior farmer's market nutrition program was a new program in the two thousand and two farm  bill give seniors vouchers that they can spend farmers markets mean was one of the first states to take advantage of that program and it's been a phenomenal success for example community supported agriculture really wasn't widespread in maine when that when it began and now we have a large number of farmers in participation has increased dramatically now under farmers who are paid up front with one hundred dollars for each participating senior and senior get deliveries of fresh fruits and impossible for the program to continue so the first question is how does the u s plan to address regionally specific nutritional and agricultural needs in two thousand and eight and would you be willing to revisit the idea of flexibility in the senior farmer's market nutrition program the second question involves regional equity program which provided funding of about twelve million dollars to each state for conservation  the backlog in conservation funding and in the absence of a regional equity program how do you propose to address the needs of those areas which historically understood or served agricultural communit s in reference to your first question i'd be happy to look at whatever we've done i'm not in in see if there's something we can do to try to fix the problem that you've got there  let me just answer it that way let me also point out and this is probably on the positive side of the ledger in one of our proposals we take that senior followed her program and we set it off in terms of that being considered as a part of your assets to determine whether you qualify for any other nutrition program we do that with the senior boxer program in our proposal college savings and one other item i'm not remembering right now oh military military combat pay but i will look at that in terms of the twelve million you're right the what we have proposed to do on our farm bill proposal is to base determination on the merit of the application the twelve million dollars that was set aside by previous action i think kind of sets a placeholder for states like yours we did approach differently we said  look let's just look at the merit of the application see who qualifies based upon the merit if your state does better in that application that's great but that's that's how we approached it if i could just follow up there right for the question we have is given the diversity of agricultural communities around the country how how do you what criteria are you going to use to judge whether a program in maine is comparable a program in the brasco or texas or that  issue the base funding to keep every culture programs going to syria is very important to us and we were not sure how mirror program would work we do it now i mean our conservation programs at least in part are based upon criteria and scoring and so it's part of the charge to the u s d a to figure that out and into it fairly and i think we do  yeah the criteria it's not something we just put out there it's it has to go through rulemaking and we receive comments and then we we end up with what the criteria will be but we do acknowledge the answer to your question is we do it now but it mid late there are what we're proposing does not create a stakeholder place for any state we say we would go through that merit based system that we are familiar with and decide which applications rank where and which ones then would get funded a good thing about our conservation programs almost always there's more demand than we have money for in so they have to be critical access hospitals and i'm glad you did i believe that in the browse my district alone has forty eight of them sixty five in the brassica and it's a delivery system that is working very well in terms of streamlining services there's been some give and take along the way within the these rural communities but i would say in large part it's been very popular even though there's kind of some centralizing of services and so if if you would care to share some of the rationale you said it was on renovation i believe of some of these facilities would have been limited only to renovation or could you expand on that a little bit new equipment would be a part of that but it is basically to bring that hospital up to modern standards as you know in the third district of nebraska is a perfect example many of these hospitals are in small communities and very very rural areas when that hospital closes health care disappears for a lot of miles and that's what we're trying to avoid we're trying to not only avoid that hospital closing but we want it to  have state of the art medical care life saving capabilities so if somebody has a heart attack or there's a farm x then for a car accident or whatever they they can get to that hospital and receive  that life saving medical treatment so it's an excellent program in my judgment we should have done these hospital sooner but we've got that proposal to do all of them in our farm bill proposal and i really think like your district it's going to be very very well received really cross the country and most submit for the record a list of the states and number of hospitals impacted i'm going to guess that maybe not every state but the majority of states have critical access hospitals that will benefit from this proposal thank you  time mr secretary for your testimony sir let me say that i think there are some provisions in your proposal that have great merit particularly those that focus on the question of whether we can continue to make unlimited amounts of payment i know that you have one proposal that picks a figure of two hundred thousand after all appropriate deductions and the like i'm not sure if that's precisely the right level but it's certainly the right direction we cannot do all the things you're being asked to do today and that we are being asked to do as a committee if it's a blank check but i need to us center in an and have great concern in the same area that congresswoman raised with you earlier and that is the disaster unmitigated failure of privatization food stamp services in my home state of texas indeed is an issue that a number of members of the texas delegation wrote the department of agriculture about before texas ever proceeded with its misbegotten contract with extent you're a company based in bermuda that won't even pay the taxes due that its competitors pay here in the united states but wants lots of taxpayer business despite the promise of great savings this privatization contract has cost federal taxpayer money in additional administrative costs there are also i think serious disruption of service of low income families in the area of taxes that i personally represent as a result of this pilot including a delight of more than three thousand families in the first three months alone now that texas has revised its contract with censure and limited to privatization skiing i think we need to draw lessons from the mistakes and made in texas by texans and mistakes made in washington by a department that approved texas moving forward with this backroom deal answer and my question is whether or not we're going to have any more oversight from your department than we had in approving this contract initially and whether the oversight will consist of anything more than just writing it letters that already answered of the type that you sent to indiana but in texas the answer didn't specify the february twentieth date in fact the last letter seem to express the dismay of your original administrator just please give us some information in texas hasn't done period we think we have made great strides in the food stamp area you know our error rate is as low as it's been really ever well course one of the reasons that i'm so concerned about the accenture contract because the error rate went up we had a good food stamp program before the current administration down there started wrecking it by giving all the work privatization scheme six center saying they'd save our taxpayers money when in fact it ended up costing us money and i don't quite understand why it is you've only written letters asking for information and yet our old buddy mitch daniels who we've had a little experience with in this committee in his earlier role decides he wants to make the same mistakes in indiana and and  program that's well run well in the financial and is not here but my problem is not that we're looking at the process here and how we are going to put families in jeopardy i just really want to ask you based on the february twenty eighth date and your own desire to have well run programs if you'll give a commitment to this committee that you will ask the state of indiana to delay that transfer until we have had a chance to be briefed on the specifics on what you are requesting from the state and  satisfied that we're satisfied that indiana is in fact complying with the law can we have that kind of a commitment from us i can give you this commitment that until we're satisfied that they are going to comply with the law and run a good program they would not go forward i would say that about any state now here's what i would offer to you i i really want to spend a little bit more time seeing where indiana is set this letter went out i think a week ago every day and maybe the response is going to be on our gas by close of business today or tomorrow bottom line is this we want the program to to run right we are proud of our food stamp program it's doing great things out there we are and rolling numbers that i can't that i would imagine people didn't even think we'd ever get to we're helping a lot of people i think in our farm bill proposals for example we're doing some very positive things in this area i want to make sure that what runs right now i will follow up on on your requests if we can be briefed on the on this program just committee can be briefed on this program it's a hundred percent that this is just not being sure you did a good job like you thought you did a good job or your predecessor did in approving the accenture contract but you're going to give us a chance to hear about it before all this happens we are always happy to be before this committee i just ask you to do the same thing for taxes as well on this new program because those letters didn't have a february twentieth deadline one of them was january fourth one of which january twelfth the latter one said please let us know w i will follow up on your comments relative to both states and we will send somebody in your direction with the latest information we have give you each a briefing in and hopefully we can answer thank you very much mr chairman and mr secretary and your colleagues it is good to have you here i've got a whole host of questions all the way from the california impact from this farm bill california is a little different agricultural reality than the rest of the country to trade which is very important to our our farmers in california and forestry probably the poorest area in my district is a place called  west point in calaveras county has one of the highest percentage of children on food stamps one of the lowest per capita income and it used to be a thriving community with a very very strong force korea industry the all important questions but let me ask one that i don't think has been touched on and i'm concerned about and i realize you share responsibility with v h s on that and that is  the vulnerabilities that we have within that and whether or not we are putting enough attention and that includes funding for research on that and whether or not we are on the federal level are coordinating not only with the states but with the private sector in that regard but i've had some classified briefings on the potential it's enough to concern me it's enough to suggest at least in my mind that  this is a very strong vulnerability that not only could do damage to us economically in short order but could do human damage as well and could you tell me what your department in that regard and how you chordate with the department of homeland security in that regard we do if it's accurate terrorism we work with the department of homeland security but if it relates to  an agricultural product we would we would lead on that on that issue here's kind of how breaks down we have in the budget request about three hundred forty one million dollars  and that's all part of the food nagra cultural defense initiative that would be our piece of that funding would include one hundred forty eight million increase for critical ongoing efforts  so we work with homeland security but actually it even goes beyond that we would work with health and human services for example if there is a threat to human health and then there's  there's a piece of this that is hard to quantify from a budget standpoint but it's very real and that's situations like an influenza as you know congress put out a pretty substantial amount of money to deal with avian influenza issues there has been a greste of course needed a national effort all departments doing tabletop sitting in the same  room doing their planning together and that was in response to avian influenza but i can tell you all of that work all of that planning all of that effort will serve us if it's avian influenza or  a bioterrorism sort of attack so we feel very very strongly that the cooperation here is good the effort between departments is seamless the the money that has been  sent our way by by congress has been appreciated and i think we have a very very robust system here so it's an excellent question i think we're doing some good things here some of them love to follow up with you about the level of education that we are focusing on to inform members of the agricultural community about some of the very easy ways that you could introduce some very damaging  diseases to our country and how we make sure that that educational system goes all the way down to the workers but let me just ask this about the area of forestry what  i tell folks in some areas like west point about the federal government's attitude i know we have a healthy forest initiative we have some programs to try to assist those communities within the payments for their schools but i have never seen people that were more devastated in terms of not having an opportunity for jobs in an area where there were generations and some of these people were native americans living in this area but all of them were people who wanted to continue to live in the area but frankly they can't find jobs because they talk about the restrictions we placed on the force of the united states and the inability for us to actually allow them to make any contribution i have i have personally visited  areas throughout the country where at one time there was a very robust industry and now there's virtually no industry like you i have met with families where literally they're facing the prospect that they're out of work because the industry simply is dying let me just tell you i fundamentally believe that you can have a very robust industry that is sensitive to the for us sensitive to the environment not everybody agrees with that in your state there is there is a healthy measure of litigation it's incredible i plead guilty to being an attorney well i'm an attorney to not to speak ill of our brother and but there's a lot of there's any forced issue we address  part of the country you can almost guarantee that not only will our well our rules be challenge but everything else that you could possibly imagine i know my time is up not just one thing and that is i wish the president and some members of his cabinet when we're talking about alternative energy sources in addition to talking about switch switchgrass would also talk about the fuel that we have in our forests if we could somehow use that as a source of creating alternative energy it would create those jobs in this area it would clean up the fuel and it would give us an advantage in the area of energy independence that would be extraordinary in your state  be energy program we have a grant program we're proposing for innovation innovative solutions to local forest management issues we share your vision here we think there's a great opportunity here again i think you'll end up with a healthier forest a better manage for us and you're not going to have the situations we often face in your state with forest fires were quite honestly they catch that  of tax and in terms of agricultural policy that levels the playing field in terms of what we do with bio mass and get away from the specter of too much in corn that has all sorts of bizarre and unintended consequences not the least of which for agriculture  and i appreciate what's there and i think there are things we ought to be doing in terms of how we provide the tax and subsidy incentives i have three questions i'll lead with my first one just to say part of it i think the the solution is being more thoughtful and aggressive about how we deal with the problem of firefighting we've had what three of the six last year it's been over a billion dollars in firefighting costs there is some work that is absolutely environmentally benign and in fact would be supported by environmentalists if we put some serious money into it and not pushing the limits with with some legislation you don't have to do but fine tuning legislation my colleague peter de fazio has some legislation that's not controversial that won't be tied up in court that will put people to work in communities like yours and make those communities safer and fire resistant but there's a flip side to that and that is we have to stop treating our rural communities like suburban bedrooms where people are going to get urban level of fire protection by locating places where they simply aren't safe it's bad for forest management practices and it puts people at risk and dr your costs of firefighting up one hundred or a thousand times and when you put global warming on top of this and then you have people growing up into the hinterlands i think the estimates are that there will be one million more people living in suburban denver in this in this arena we won't have enough money to fight the fires so i i my first question to you and i i know where there won't be time to do justice to it because i probably want to get my other two questions but i would like a serious response about what you're willing to do to redirect some money in these non controversial ways that will put these people to work provide some bio mass material and make the community safer and concordant way that we start having state and law will governments be responsible for not allowing people to sprawl into areas where they're not safe it undermines the environmental and forest characteristics and provides huge firefighting liability question  one question to shifting gears and again i i will be happy to have something in writing at a later time deals deals with in the international arena  i mean i love the the authorization of up to twenty five percent of our food aid as cash for local and regional purposes overseas not spending a good zillion dollars to take dramatically subsidized crops around the world and putting local poor farmers out of work so we've got to give them more aid in the long run i would i would love to have a more detailed response in  ways that would allow our food aid program to reach more people more quickly with a more efficient use of the taxpayer dollars this is one mr chairman i hope we can get our arms around and work with and last but not least i would love to have a response in terms of what you think the future will be if we're unable to take our farm and trade policies in a way that deals with things like brazil whacking us on on cotton subsidies or canada on corn what's the likely exposure for american agriculture these three questions if you would i'm keenly interested want to work with you i appreciate the rhetoric that was advanced and some of the proposals i come from a state that you know we produce more agricultural product than my other friend the other  l from north dakota we produce more agricultural product we get one sixth one six of the total federal benefit in subsidies on our commodities for floor environmental all of the things combined so i'm i like where you're going i like the approach your reaction to those three questions would be useful off three great questions and i'll have to be a little  because of time but i would love to sit down and talk with you more about your thoughts here a written response is is fine i don't mean to impose on my colleagues that's all right i can i can hit these pretty quickly we set out to do a farm bill proposal that simply would be more equitable and that meant more equitable across farmers sixty percent of u s farmers are not subsidized with cash subsidies and they aren't in our proposal we have about five billion dollars for what we call the specialty crops produce or people who grow food and we as you know it's everything from research to fido sanitary sanitary purchasing more fruits and vegetables the twenty five percent food aid issue is something we believe in it is in our proposal and it makes a lot of sense we want to buy food here too but there are certain emergency situations where literally being able to get food to somebody is a life or death situation not in two months or thirty days today i mean literally today we're not taking all of the food aid but we are saying this twenty five percent would give us the flexibility to go out there purchase food get it to those people who need it very very quickly and then in terms of your ideas on forests were opened ideas the current system i just be very candid isn't working very well maybe it's not and maybe nobody's happy about this system maybe environmentalist's are unhappy maybe people whose job depends upon  working in logging aren't happy there's got to be something we can do here and i'd love to sit down with a more extensively appreciate that appreciate your indulgence mr chairman fifteen seconds if i may i hope you're also considering when emergency aid you know you have to do it fast with cash because of time constraints i hope you'll also consider in some of those areas where we come in with heavily subsidised american food it puts the local farmer out of business and those people end up starving i hope and less we do it on a permanent basis i hope you will use that as a consideration for cash payments as well and under this literally go into that marketplace and acquire food and that's what we would buy so we think this would work well in certain circumstances not necessarily never circumstance we're not asking for agree with that statement we are blessed we are blessed by exactly what you're saying a very safe wholesome food supply and we generally spend less of our disposable income than just about anybody in the world that's a very but it's big business it requires a lot of money a lot of careful investment and you don't have to be a rich person but you cannot produce and process the amount of food and fiber that we're going to be required to produce in this country and and do it on the cheap it's just the technology demands that you had that kind of capital investment and i know they're still refuse mall operations out there and that's just our wealth but i would wonder if anyone has considered the value of a farm bill getting us in this position stand the europeans and get us at least an even break on that is you because there's no health risk or or anything involved in and i fish we're waiting on them to give us the information that they have about how this happened and all that we're getting a response from them that they're playing i would say is and i got into this business by getting involved in conservation programs and and working leadership of any government agency i have ever seen is a train wreck the farmers have come to hate it and they don't even want to do business with the landowners want nothing to do with unfreezing the possible white boy and i will i'll look into to the last issue you've mentioned a couple of things i would offer very very respectfully because i don't want to launch off into a discussion about tax policy but  actually revenues are up i mean double digit it's rather remarkable and having worked around budgets a long time you know you have your base upon which you tax and you have your rate upon which you tax that base and there's a number of ways to approach this but one way is if you can if you can get that base moving in vesting in employing and doing all of those things that's going to impact the rate upon which you apply a vigorous we're going to read a list there we go broke well here's the fact of the matter is that revenues are coming in at historic levels  that's probably why there's so much emphasis these days upon balanced budget and spending and earmarks and all of those things but the revenues are very very strong the other thing i would mention you know i share your philosophy about foreign policy i think we are the beneficiaries of some really great things that have happened but the two thousand two farm bill was not the same as the first farm bill  passed each farm bill tends to build upon the shoulders of the last farm bill and hopefully we do it a little better each time and we feel very strongly that our proposal is that for a variety of reasons and i won't launch into that but just in terms of dollars and cents if you reauthorize the zero two farm bill just said let's do it all again same way don't on dot and i don't on cross city would be spending five billion dollars less than our proposal now we work to make sure our proposal would fit within the balanced budget goals and it does but the reality is that we think there are some things here that make a lot of sense and that farm bill proposal last thing i would say and keith would probably know this off the cuff i think are rice exports have stayed strong now i would agree with you on the e u and believe me we are standing up to him and we're not going to back down i don't care if it's hormones and beef or if it's the rice issue or whatever else the flavor of the day is with them we are going to back down this is something we take very very seriously because with rice fifty percent of that crop needs to be export  so i just want to assure you congressman i'm not going away i'm not backing down and i don't see the u s t r backing down on this issue either on every issue we have with the e u we've either file claims against them in the w t o we work to negotiate better results i will tell you in every way we can push the envelope with them we have we have not walked away from your rice farmers but we stood in the world that says that market yet they close to access to that market congressman here's what i would tell you under our rules here in the united states we c close access to markets and we do and they don't like it but sometimes you have to do it now in this case personally i don't see anything unsafe going on here and we're going to do everything we can to push this issue enforce this issue so i want you to know i'm not walking away from this we are absolutely committed to getting rice back into the e u and every market in the world every market this or govern at the whole array of activities department agriculture is conducted with respect to rice you have to look at the other markets besides european union which could have close to us in didn't because of the work that department agriculture has done i can point to canada best efforts we had of canada to maintain that long grain market i would also point out that before the rice you're starting we expected to export ninety seven million hundred weight of rice then we have the problem with liberty link rice we thought exports were going to fall off the chart they didn't in a large measure is because of the export market means to department agriculture conducted around the world and as we sit here today we expect our rice exports will be one hundred two million a hundred w went through kind of quoting a litany of numbers and i would just say that the question really shouldn't be about whether a program is level funded or cut or increase the question should be whether these programs are adequately funded to meet the needs that we have in this country and you began by saying that you that you believe that these programs aren't indeed funded to meet the needs i respectfully disagree with that when i look at this budget i have to tell you i'm a little bit concerned that  it is inadequate to the task of addressing let alone eliminating hunger and food insecurity in this country and the the job of doing that rests not just with your agency there are other agencies too i had this discussion with secretary leavitt when he was here emergency room in massachusetts masters hospital the doctors tell me about senior citizens coming there with all kinds of ailments because they're taking a medication without adequate food they at the seams are dehumanized they're demoralized when they have to choose between food and medication or rent or or utilities yet once again this budget just like last year proposes to eliminate the commodity supplemental food program which is about a modest one hundred seven million dollars and while i'm touch on the subject of seniors and food stamps we both know why so many eligible senior citizens don't take advantage of the food stamp program they only qualify for a ten dollar minimum monthly benefit and the three thousand dollars asset limit has remained the same for many years and unlike most programs for elders is not indexed for inflation i think these are changes that need to be addressed in the farm bill but i don't see any such proposals in your in your budget  and and if these necessary changes were made which i think they should be made they will have a budget impact like that your comments on that but before i do i want to get my second question with regard to children nearly eighty percent of food stamp recipients are households with children so changes in eligibility can have a devastating effect on whether working families are able to put food on the table for their kids the data provided by many faith based organizations food pantries and food banks clearly shows that many families exhaust their monthly food stamp benefits about two thirds of the way through the month yet the changes in eligibility proposed in this budget actually reduces the number of families eligible for food stamps rather than increasing the amount of the benefit or expanding the number of families eligible for the benefit that if it so in that respect where they were going in the wrong direction for the two hundred eighty thousand families slated to lose their food stamp eligibility under this budget approximately forty thousand of their children will also lose their access to free school lunches so in addition i think that this budget once again fails to provide the necessary funding for universal school breakfast programs after school feeding programs the summer feeding programs leaving more more kids hungry undernourished food insecure all these you know all these programs remain significantly in my opinion under funded with very limited reach now i guess my question mr secretary is that at a minimum why can't we get a budget that adequately addresses hunger in america i mean or at least addresses the needs of our children our senior citizens this budget i think tolerates hunger and that's why the take away from the positive things in this budget to try to deal with hunger but it doesn't anywhere near near where we need to go to to eliminate the i'm of this country that makes no effort to move america forward in cutting hunger in half or even reducing a by a third  and i'd like your reaction to that but also make a suggestion that maybe you were someone in this administration should head up the interdepartmental interagency task force designed specifically  to deal with the hunger issue maybe cutting hunger and have by the year two thousand and fifteen you know or even even doing better than that but i don't see in this budget how we get to that goal and again i mean if you could if you could deal with this hunger issue you know we can deal with that we can control health care costs we can get a more productive workforce kids will learn better in school i mean all the benefits are very obvious to us obvious to me but yet we're not we're not there with this budget on the pre shared your couple of thoughts that i might offer i don't think any administration in the history of this country has more aggressively and fully funded nutrition programs than this one they are  growing we fully funded we establish a contingency program so if there's additional growth that we didn't it did not anticipate we can handle that i think the senior program we're talking about the commodity supplemental food program  let me just be very clear in that proposal we have outreach dollars to to reach out to seniors we feel very very strongly that if they qualify for a nutrition program that we should get them on that program this commodity supplemental food program is only in a few states if i remember correctly a few states and i think a couple of reservations of i'm not mistaken it's a very very limited program and in my judgment there's just no doubt that the greatest impact you're going to have is through the food stamp nutrition program and then the other one you mentioned i think you're probably works more than i do but this is a situation where maybe they've qualified for job training or something and so they're automatically put there and we're saying wait what it should be about is qualifying them for the food stamp program if they qualify let me just assure you we're going to get them the benefit of that program well congressman mcgovern i think the secretary has touched upon you know the key highlights of this again i think the data would show pretty clearly that our outreach efforts and this is ministration to reach those people that are eligible for food stamps but for whatever reason in the past have failed to sign up for the program has been you know a real benefit to this country and the data that was cited earlier by another one of your colleagues i think is the right data to show that we have reached a tremendous number of people  with this program here but one of the problems i mentioned is that for a lot of senior citizens they have a ten dollar minimum which you know is you know i don't i mean which is nothing you know and you know and so i mean part of the issue is not just you know reach is also having a benefit that is you know is is reasonable and we're not indexing this for inflation we're not recognizing the the rising costs and i know my time is up but i would give just point that out and say that i think we need to work on that and again i would urge my the secretary you know maybe this interagency task force or maybe a white house summit on hunger but i think we need to focus on this issue in a way that you know with all due respect i think we have a long way to go just a qu quickly just a quick closing comment on that point in terms of the level of benefit in our budget proposal we do provide six months worth of benefits to those trends you know transferring into the food stamp program away from the c s f p program i believe that benefit is about twenty two million dollars worth in the bill so that they do have a significant transition but that's much smaller than the elimination of the commodity supplemental food program which is one hundred seven and state in north carolina i think all states we're north carolina's one of the top five states in total lobster production in this country so major crop producer and we also have a growing influx of people from all over the country a number of retirees moving there and so we're growing very rapidly so conservation funding to help strike a balance between farm and the growing cities use in programs like farm preservation and c r p are very important it was state like ours and i think in most states so my question is this we're being asked to set aside billions  additional funding for conservation for the next farm bill which i happen to agree with however i am perplexed and i hope you can straighten me out when the president's whole budget recommendation that we know how  for this year alone cuts conservation fund by almost four hundred million dollars state like ours and a lot in the southeast we're seeing growth in poultry and pork i mean you were obviously can appreciate conservation is really needed you got mobility mobility own animals it through eclipse you got to deal with you've got land conservation these things really are a grave concern and i'm not sure these two things will meet and you know we're sort of like this this gets so complicated i almost need the budget to explain it but as i understand it it's a cut to the baseline it's not a cut in terms of absolutes but here's another thing i would offer we're kind of at this unusual intersection here where we have a budget process going on but we also have a farm bill process going on in this september the current farm bill basically expires that expires with a two thousand and eleven crop year and hopefully we'll have a new farm bill ready and up and going in the new farm bill as you point out we substantially increase funding for conservation programs about seven billion dollars in some of the programs that work very very well on a state like yours and in the cattle programs hard to higher levels then we're actually we're actually proposing in the budget for example equip with those potentially in a two thousand to farm bill to one point two or three billion dollars this program has been traditionally funded about a billion dollars by congress they have said last year they funded a billion dollars we are proposing to again fund it at the billion dollars and waiting for the transition to the farm bill we are going to have some new rules and regulations new ways of operating these programs so rather than making a change in the two thousand and eight budget we would rather make those changes in the in the farm bill context and then raise the money based on the new proposals if you come forward in the farm bill so there's no absolute cut for example in equal we're still maintaining the same level we just are not increasing it to the full authorization to two thousand to  recognising that one good year does not necessarily or to necessarily mean a long term successful operation when a piece of equipment today cost a quarter million dollars it just a few years ago me of co last time i checked we don't have a whole lot of farmers who are retiring to the bahamas thank you thank you mr chairman secretary i have a couple of issues there are a lot of issues i'd like to talk about but i'm going to try to stick to two the national forest land the job for rural communities act would authorize you to provide a source of funding for four year extension of the security schools to help fund this initiative the administration recommends that we sell a number of national forest systems land around the nation my question is approximately how much revenue do you anticipate generating from your proposal how do you anticipate counties would make up the difference what happens four years from now and isn't that a little bit like selling your seed corn  given the fact that this was tried last year you know why are we doing this again and it was and then what additional steps if you take then to further the  secure rural schools act which affects forty two states in forty four hundred school districts across the country and the reason i talk about this is i'm from oregon and i am from a state where this has is just devastating to our rural communities our rural counties this is money that we said because you have all of the federal lands in your county that we are going to pay you in lieu of taxes that's where it started and it was timber receipts and then it was secure rural schools and we have literally pink slips going out today and tomorrow and then stay where you cutting down the sheriff's department so they can operate ideate departments so they can operate and one instance laying out the number of jail guards actually is against the state law where they would have to go on that one so this is a very serious problem for those of us that have a lot of federal lands so that's why for i want to talk about secure real schools first question second question again being from the well i'm a valley that grows twelve hundred different crops most of those are vegetables tree nuts nursery crops fruit represent the specialty crops represent about fifty percent of the farm gate receipts went to fifty billion dollars and yet as you heard my colleague say on the river see even a fraction of u s d a finding and i think it's a little ironic because most  farmers i grew up on a farm in north dakota wind farm but most of the farmers in the world i am a valley are small farmers they grow crops that are easily damaged i mean if you are strawberry grower you and you have rain at the wrong time you don't have any sense trying at the wrong time your crop goes under so these are small farmers growing the foods that we need to supply to you just heard one of my colleagues talking about hunger i mean we need to supply more of these foods to a school these are fresh vegetables fresh fruits small farmers certainly a lot of uncertainty  sort of what your take is on that and i know in two thousand and four the president signed into law the specially crop competitiveness and rights act which authorized forty four million dollars for grants for states for research for marketing education pest control so forth however since that act has been signed into law the president has largely left  unfunded so my question is does the president's budget include anything for this program in if not does this budget include anything that benefits this vital segment of u s agriculture yeah let me if i might  visit with you about specialty crops then i'm going to ask god to maybe walk us through the budget on the program that you talked about at the start of your you know real schools yes ok we're all schools i can i will tell you congresswoman without any hesitation that specialty crops have never been a part of farm policy like we are proposing they be a part of it in the propos three weeks ago especially crop legislation that you're talking about all discretionary funding and it's it's been a challenge to have much funding come out of that bill here's what we're proposing and this would be mandatory funding we're proposing about a five billion dollars program for specialty crops two point seven five billion to purchase fruits and vegetables for our food assistance programs an additional five hundred million to increase the purchase of fruits and vegetables in our school meals in the schools could could use those fruits and vegetables in whatever way they feel would be best they might do a snack program they they might do dual fruits and vegetables with their hot lunch program or if they have a morning breakfast program they might do it  providing two hundred fifty million dollar increase for the market access program that's a program targeted at non program came out of these and again to promote a very popular program  providing twenty million to address sanitary phytosanitary issues again directed at specialty crops or increasing the technical assistance for specialty crops and our specialty crop farmers the waste from those crops would be eligible for all of our energy programs in your area you'll benefit from conservation proposals and some other things we were proposing but i would specifically mention that in your area you benefit from a proposal we have that includes one point seven billion dollars for regional water programs and again i'm confident that that would be very helpful to you we've had a very very positive response to our proposal from especially crop producers because quite honestly they just didn't have much place in previous farm policy but when we did our farm bill forums these farmers showed up and said you know we to place at the table that subsidies that no one asked me in that industry for cash subsidies but for research purchasing fruits and vegetables market promotion sanitary phytosanitary and we have had on every issue here and i think it's the most bold initiative for the farmers that you're talking about of any farm bill proposal ever me to date in foreign policy now let me ask  got to talk to you a little bit about the budget numbers here and paper because i'd like to i'd like to have a sense when you talk about five billion dollars for specialty crops how does that compare to the commodit ballpark figure of the comparison of the five five billion to you compared to thirty five billion ok need to know these are the small farmers the farmers that here's here's what i would say that's the direct subsidy number ok i can promise you i did not hear a single specialty crop farm or at any farm bill farm i did show up and say you know i want to be basically is you know there are two pieces of legislation that apply to rural schools or something called the you know the one thousand nine hundred eight act right where were these counties that have have a large it was had largely timber production in their counties got twenty five percent of the timber receipts problem is we've had a very vast reduction in timber production in timber sales around the country something from over ten billion board feet down to something like two billion board is not going to change and that may not change and that's something beyond our control a little bit  understand now that unfortunately that second piece of legislation the two thousand act expired in two thousand and six has not been extended by congress in two thousand and seven although we did propose something in last year's budget we again are proposing something similar in not collecting any money this is a lag when you're you have to collect the money then pay it out the next year so right now there's a hiatus in terms of funding for two thousand and seven and we would continue this in two thousand and eight i think the payments would not be made until two thousand and nine so there is a lag problem in funding here and we realise that problem but we're going to have to work with the committees on the hill here to try to figure out a way to solve robert i mean i just want you to know how serious it is a way you handle yourself i want to start by saying two things one is thank you for the for the department's work on behalf of the citrus industry and realty of the citrus canker i know you weren't there during the whole fight that's been going on a long time but obviously we lost the fight in terms of eradication but we're now you're developing helping us develop a policy or a plan to live with it and and we appreciate if you  say that by the way officers farmers are or doing pretty well better than they've been doing because of market prices reduced reduced stocks also want to say that many of those of us in the farm community are not opposed to farm service agency mergers and consolidations we know that needs to come and we would it along with mr cooper encourage you to do continue that in a renewable and rational agricultural policy in the importance of that to our economy but not only to our economy but to our national security those of us who grew up in on the farm and and had parents and grandparents that owned the farm in the depression days understand how important the agricultural i mean the national agricultural policy and government involvement is in this commodity prices have traded in a very narrow range for forty years we've only been able to stay competitive mr secretary because we have stayed ahead of the curve on research and development research and development is a critical import and the way that we deliver those research that research and development is through our land grant university system research and extension services an do you have a plan or soon for opening up in those research numbers i think what you're looking at is the earmarks and if you just look at number that number without the earmarks it looks like there's been a real cut but if you recognize that those are earmarks that's what's happening there i think our funding for research is actually up some it's excluding the earmarks so that's the number you're looking at i was so expand our research capability we're proposing some internal reorganization so we will have it under one umbrella makes a lot of sense but we're also approach proposing additional funding  know the other thing i mentioned i think would be very interesting if you were proposing a billion dollars in additional research in our farm bill proposals directed at those non program crops those specialty crops again this was something that we were asked to fund so i think when you're looking at it set off the earmarks you know i don't have to have a debate about earmarks that right big discussion point these days our research dollars are actually pretty strong but i would ask you also to look at our farm bill proposals i think we're doing some pretty exciting things there in terms of our proposal i will respect here but earmarks are not when you turn know about this can you tell me and from a parochial standpoint again those of us in the southeast you know crops always been a very important program you know we we we changed it major and made my way you know too for yes the fact that we don't have any effect of it that portion of the farm bill expired in zero seven yeah we have pretty well gotten out of the storage business if you will there are only two crops that get anything for storage and one would be peanuts and one would be cotton when the peanut program was changed and i just educated myself on this late yesterday afternoon after appearing before the ag committee in the house  that storage was extended for not extended but put in place for four years so that has now expired and again it would be in keeping with our approach and that is to move away from paying for storage and so that's what has happened here with the peanut industry that's probably why you're maybe getting calls from your peanut producers but that was only designed to be a four year program it is now run out  systems by small and medium sized producers that are largely on subsidized and improving nutrition we have several what tends to happen in the farm bill or in the way u s d a approaches these is they're scattered all over the place it's not looked at coherently and i just wanted to draw that your attention so for example in the wic farmer's market program excellent program for mt explain to you what that is for children for mothers nannies of those families don't eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables helps our local farmers who tend to be frozen out of the processing facilities far away and can't get their product to market as we approach a new farm bill and you look at your budget i would really have you look at that program another program the senior farmer's market nutrition program i think you were informed i would be asking you about that one because that it's been a test program since two thousand giving very small amounts of money to our seniors so they eat better and get fresh fruits and vegetables there's been a cap on that at fifteen million dollars around the country and over half the states don't even have any prototype program we have one prototype program in ohio which we've worked on now in our region for well i think going on for five years and rather than u s d a learning from these prototypes what's happening in the state like ohio we've heard based on some regulations that came out of u s d a and sembler now they want to do is take a program and begin breaking it apart putting it in other parts of the state where there's no experience and i would just urge you mr secretary to look at these programs in a way that they operate over a period of time you strengthen the local food system you strengthen the ability of unsubsidized crop producers to provide good nutritious food i wouldn't buy when you buy just those program but rather look at the area offices on aging  we need to do is to get our producers a little help in processing and we can provide a really good meal to a million people a year if we can do that twelve months out of the year we can then begin to move that food into the local know we've never been able to get u s d a to do this i think i'm going to propose a new piece of legislation as part of the farm bill in order to do this but you understand it because you're an agricultural is to hard so if you were to just take the senior farmers nutrition program as part of that  could you tell me would you consider your budget doesn't say this not capping the program is fifteen million and drawing on the experience of regions that have painstakingly tried to make it work with seniors across this country rather than in many ways dismantling what you've been about creating since two thousand would you consider that yeah although we took a little different approach and i'd love to sit down with you more and talk about this but in the programs that you've talked about the additional funding that we are dedicating to our nutrition programs to buy fruits and vegetables those programs can take advantage of what we are proposing inch and it's a substantial amount of money it is not an insignificant amount of money and i think it would be yeah three point two five billion available at least that's what we're proposing and again mandatory funding is our proposals so it's something that if congress acts on it would be there and available but what links them to the farmer and what creates the continuum from farm to table producer of specialty crops because we are literally going out there again with our proposal with a substantial amount of money in buying those crops and in that would come in an area like yours that would be available for the programs you've talked about now the senior farmer's market program i would tell you i like the program i think it does do a lot of good things be happy to take a look at that and how how well that's working thank you but again i think if if we can have a few minutes of your time some time we would love to walk you through our proposals here because i think that would make a lot of sense and work for what you're describing yes we need a more coherent mindset at u s d a to draw them together it sounds like here with all reminder here i would love to meet with you on that i know my time's expired mr secretary the amount we're going to pay on interest this year on the debt is twenty times more than your discretionary budget you know i thought i would just let you see this chart because it's a concern of all of ours our trade deficit is bad is our budget deficit and a major category that is petroleum two hundred fifty billion dollars a year about an eighty billion dollars deficit the most important category of trade deficit i just wanted to ask you energy and natural resources who u s d a is thinking about this in an integrated way we established something that i think is really doing very well and doing some exciting things that's an energy cord an aging console witnesses who are about to come for that she's doing at boston medical center is really really quite incredible but both of these individuals are doing unbelievable work and are battling hunger and their respective communities and actually serving as models for the rest of the country to follow that one of the reasons why i had requested this additional panel was essentially out of a sense of frustration that we don't talk about hunger very much in this congress and that  the special on this committee where a lot of the discussion tends to be around numbers as i mentioned to the secretary joe hans i think it's important we understand that there are people behind those numbers and a lot of people don't realize this but the united states of america actually signed a treaty  to cut hunger world hunger in half by the year two thousand and fifteen and the last time i checked the united states was still part of the world and i fail to see in this budget  mechanisms or the funding or the strategy to even reach that modest goal of cutting hunger and have by the year two thousand and fifteen notwithstanding some of the good things that the secretary jones is doing the fact of the matter is that we have a lot of kids who or who are eligible for the preschool lunch program during the school year who don't get summer feeding in the summertime we get people who are not taking advantage of the food stamp program in part because the benefit is too low  not just because that they can't go through all the paperwork to register the other day when secretary leavitt was here i asked him some questions about the fact that a lot of senior citizens are showing up in emergency rooms  ill because they're taking medication on an empty stomach and that we need to do something about that especially want to control health care costs and that seems to be one way to do it and his response to me was well i want to assure you i'm against hunger well i've never met anybody who's fo graduate of harvard medical school a professor at boston university school of medicine a pediatrician and then a party on the growing problem of hunger in the united states and especially its effect on children is the news holland from my state south carolina runs something called the harvest hope food bank shoves eighteen counties throughout south carolina twelve in my district providing for three hundred and fifty member agencies which are food well being of americans at greatest nutritional risk which are our children followed closely by our elderly i'm a researcher as well as a clinician i am vald the name of the children's sentinel nutrition assessment program which works in the states and many of the people on this committee including pennsylvania maryland minnesota arkansas and that's the truth it's but i and i know you've had a lot of numbers and because i teach in the med school i can't help show you more numbers and more slides but i really want to remind you that what i know as a clinician that every number comes with a name and a face and let me tell you about a little boy that all called sam he was born in our hospital at a reasonable birth weight six pounds and then when he was sent into my clinic which only takes kids who are scaring their neighbors health center doctors at thirteen months of age he only weighed seventeen pounds which is the weight of a normal little boy  seventeen months he was all had eyes and ribs and long eyelashes but his skin was so pale i thought i could see right through him and he had the most abnormal blood count i had seen in ten years i thought maybe he has a team yet but then when i sat down to take his medical history if it came clear that the reasons his blood count was so abnormal and he was so malnourished is that his family was trying to keep from some experiencing hunger by filling him up with a mixture of corn starch mixed with water and he was never allowed to go to bed hungry people get very emotional about are you going our children going to bed hungry their parents trying very hard to quote always have something in their stomach but he was very seriously malnourished once we were able to help his mother get on to the wic program which he didn't realize she was still eligible for now that he was a year and also to get the family on food  stamps he began to look much better he no longer looked like he had a fatal illness but the last time we saw him he was still developmentally delayed and on a waiting list as many of my patients are for head start now this child is no it's not unique as the first chart shows the it's on your the best way for an american family to suffer food insecurity is to have a young child under the age of six and even more under the age of three you can see that children young enough to need a sippy cup are almost twice as likely or households with children young enough to need a sippy cup cover almost twice as likely as those without children to be food insecure and this really is scary  because as you probably know the last couple of prenatal trimesters in the first three years of life are you need periods of rapid growth of body and brain and if the nutrition for that development is not adequate of quality and quantity the whole trajectory of a child's life has changed any one of you could come visit this problem firsthand here in one of our sites or in your own state i'd be happy to network you now the bland term of food insecurity doesn't sound very alarming but even at the mildest levels we found that it threatens health and development in young children one of the nutritional status of a woman when she enters pregnancy and the amount of way she gains during pregnancy are the crucial determinants of her baby's birth weight and the baby's birth weight is the crucial determinant of what we call infant mortality or which means dead babies and as you know there are huge gaps in this country and who suffers from the babies were getting better particularly in you know medical mecca by keeping these very low birth weight a lot babies alive house your house when the baby gets over what we technically refer to as prevailing crud they can eat as much as they want they replenish themselves nutritionally and they very soon are growing normally and again normally what we call in you know important families where as a representative government said people are running out of food fight with keenly if the child gets sick particularly at the end of the month there's nothing extra there isn't even enough so the child left underweight more susceptible to the next infection and down the cycle they go the same actually also happens with elderly this infection malnutrition cycle is shown in the next chart which shows that after giving everybody credit for all their background characteristics children from food insecure families they don't have to raise hungry just food insecure are ninety percent more likely to be in port health and thirty percent more likely to have required a hospitalization in  lifetime these are kids in my research project across the country who are only kids under three so that's a lot of hospitalization we've also found that with protect kids from this kind of underway now when we see a kid who's underweight and infected and sick if they have decent access to decent health care and i was interested to hear about your rural hospitals we can get them back to growth and health if we can get them adequate nutrition and adequate doctoring but even so they're left with lasting deficits in their cognitive development posing serious implications for their future ability to participate in the global knowledge economy and i heard a lot of conversations about strengthening the economy in the previous panel but if we want to strengthen the economy of the future we have to strengthen the big bird the brains of the babies of today and even iron deficiency which wick is very good at multiple studies including one from mr barry's region in arkansas on the mississippi louisiana delta that shows that food insecurity is not just associated in older children with poor physical health but with decreased school achievement in reading and math more behavior and emotional problems which of course makes it harder for the other kids in the classroom to learn and actually increased risk of suicide and adolescent girls so we have a a endemic problem that  is even now worse than it was in two thousand so when you're a doctor and you see a health problem that's all over the place you want to know what are the possibilities for prevention and treatment and i can tell you that you're there are several good medicines but you're the ones who can prescribe them i can't the first is the food stamp program which buffers even in food insecure households some of the deprivation of the children and we know that when a family loses food stamps their kids become sicker and more food insecure wiccan school meals are also good medicines but i understand that they're liable to be diluted there's good research just recently published that show it was a huge sample not ours that showed that children who were on food stamps and wic from birth and stayed in that cost medicaid much less in terms of failure to thrive malnutrition and anemia and so and there's another recent study also government funded around finding who followed a thousand kids from kindergarten to third grade those whose families started to receive food stamps in that period and much greater improvement in their reading and math than those whose family s so now what's going on with these good medicines you've heard a lot of discussion about how we have expanded access and in fact that's good too but it's like the flu vaccine will show me more kids are getting flu vaccine this year they got they got it last year but it doesn't reach anywhere near all of the eligible people enough to control the epidemic one in five kids who is eligible for food stamps don't get them and particularly at risk are citizen children of immigrants but of all kinds of kids secondly even if you get the medicine the dose is what we call subs there are a pew dick you know if your kid has just sort of the doctor says make sure you give or goes a day for ten days if you don't because going to get sick again well food stamps is that kind of low dose it's not that it's no good penicillin is a good medicine but the average benefits a dollar per meal per person and that's based on the thrifty food plan which is a theoretical estimate of what it would cost to purchase foods representing a minimally adequate diet if we did a study in boston and this is been replicated in seattle and there's very similar findings in other parts of the country next like please that this is just like a medical meeting where there's a lag you have a family of four a family of four in boston cannot even purchase a thrifty food plan assuming they get the maximum benefit of a dollar forty per meal per person which nobody does if you say yeah but mrs jones that's not a good diet for your family's health you really need to use a slow the cost version of the surgeon general style they come up about eighteen thousand dollars a year eight hundred dollars a year sure which is completely impossible for them to provide from their cash resources because they're trying to get to work to keep the house for him from becoming homeless so be it ministrations recent budget proposal addresses both  does not address the problem of broadening access or the added adequacy of food stamps to for purchase a healthy diet and it threatens to dilute the wic medicine bike hampering the the educational component and one of the groups that is at risk are those who are so poor that they are currently eligible for non cash work welfare benefits somewhere around two hundred eighty thousand and i was told three hundred twenty nine thousand working families with children making the transition from welfare to work will loose with him and then their kids will probably also lose school meals and wake so besides the failures of these preventive care in the proposal that i understand it and it's not my expertise as far as i can tell it does nothing to address the issue of at getting things to an adequate dose so enable families to purchase a healthier diet that puts things in context one person eating the south beach diet for one day has to spend as much as the maximum amount but nobody gets the government what i want for a family of four on the same day under food stamp both now i know i'm talking to a budget committee and not a medical meeting even though you think maybe i forgot but i know that your obligation is to make sure that america's resources are wisely spent all right describe to you a miracle drug which cuts babies chances of dying the creases ill health and hospitals ations in children and in sounds like an people too and behavioral emotional problems and increases kids school achievement you can test them to the blue they're blue in their face if they come to school hungry they can't learn with your budget expertise you can readily understand the implications of the fact that one average two or three days pediatric hospital patient not an i c u just plain old the monye or something like these kids get cost about eleven thousand dollars which would fund years worth of food stamps and wic for many children now i understand that you're not only balancing domestic expenditures and needs with it but also tap grappling with  international ones and i was told you have to go off for the debate on this but lest you think that i'm wildly unrealistic i would like to leave you with a statement made by winston churchill well i don't think anybody would refer to as a starry eyed liberal in the middle of world war two when great britain was dealing with homeland security problems orders of magnitudes greater than ours churchill announced on the radio that there was no better investment for any society and putting melk contribution to that is truly phenomenal we're glad to have you here to share your experience and wisdom with  t i also am representing america's second harvest the nation's food bank network which is the nation's largest hunger relief organization mr chairman and members of the committee i have been asserted that director for nine years since coming to harvest have food bank i have seen a dramatic increase in hunger and poverty and colombia and particularly in the rural command communities outside of colombia and also around the country last year we serve more than one hundred forty nine thousand needy people in a region of over one point two million this represented nearly seventy five percent of the two hundred thousand people estimated by the census to live in poverty in our community on any given week in central south carolina including the fifth control congressional districts some nineteen thousand one hundred different people receive food assistance from harvest to food bank through local volunteer lead and community based organizations long ago are the days when the chronically unemployed and homeless men represented the majority of the people we serve today our member agencies food pantry soup kitchens congressional meals sites are congregational meals fight we are seeing the working poor these are working poor who are families with children and particularly the elderly most are not receiving welfare and all are face the challenges of finding affordable housing and adequate health care today we see way too many children in soup kitchen lines too many working parents at food pantries and too many elderly people to choose between cannot pay for my utility bill and cannot or cannot eat the u s d a s most recent economic research study at the prevailing thought of hunger insecurity found that more than one in ten american households including thirty five million people in all our food insecure or as we say in south carolina they're hungry at this total twelve million are children the state it shows the south carolina has the fourth worst to rate of food in security in the nation and the highest rate of households fifteen point five percent with a very low susan security for me in south carolina that would be very hungry but statistics can often be to abstract so i'd like to share a very personal story with you about six months ago i was behind a family at a local grocery store while i waited in line i watched a mother with three children choosing which foods to back because her food stamp in a set was not enough to pay for all of it one of her daughters assuming to be about nine or ten years old appeared very sad the mother said i know honey these are some of your favorite foods but i just don't have enough left at the end of the month to pay for these so we have to put them back i'm very sorry the little girl looked down and i thought she was going to cry in addition to  i quietly told the mother that i completely understood her situation i would be glad to take care of those few items for her and handed her mother's nurse card i wanted her to personally come see me she wrote down in tears as i didn't hug me there anything for that i could do that for her because with nine days left in the month she was not going to make it until her next to stamp allotment came in food stamps are a lifeline for working families and any reduction in this program would affect tens of thousands of families and significantly impact our generated system the current food stamp benefit is extremely beneficial it's helpful and but with america's second harvest answer our own hunger study which we participated in with them we found that the food stamp benefit only lasts two point three weeks of the month at harvest food bank we have our own onsite emergency food pantry and the other three hundred and fifty member agencies are report back to me each month report the last two weeks of the mot are much worse than the first two weeks of the month and that is because that food stamp benefits is not last that long our worry about how this president's budget proposal will affect those working poor families in south carolina in math thirteen or eighteen counties we run about thirteen kids cafe sites last year i stopped at an elementary school where some children reading through one of those by that night we were serving getting color grains rice and peaches our wonderful south carolina food one little boy there who has sat down with sad was greatly enjoying his meal and i asked him what did you do for dinner before you were able to come to this kid's cafe site he reached down in his pants pocket and he pulled out a quarter and he said i used to just go buy a package of crackers with the pain up butter between them because mom mommy works two jobs and she's not there at night give me something hot these are real life examples but they feel my passion every day to work hard to make use for every available resource so that no child just has crackers even tonight i am particularly concerned with the president's fiscal year two thousand and eight budget proposal it funds aren't too many instances cut a number of programs or you lack the many of the low income people we serve in south carolina these are not people who want to hand out they are people who want to hand in south carolina they're presently two hundred twenty seven thousand households participating in the  step program in talking to the staff to our department of social services who works very closely with us the president's proposed budget would negatively affect an estimated sixty eight thousand south carolina households these are not merely numbers they're real people they're real people who we see if we are serious about ending hunger in this nation we should be increasing access to the food stamp program not making it more difficult for eligible households to qualify we should be increasing support for low income families and seniors who need supplemental food assistance to help them make it through the month mr chairman the nation's food government statistics nationally thirty five percent of emergency food recipients have to choose between buying food or paying rent or mortgage another forty two percent shoes between buying food and paying their utility bills the problem is real the problem is serious our family should not have to go hungry in order to avoid being homeless or without heat a spoke recently to several groups in colombia who are funding some privately funding organizations and i talked about the community the community of homelessness in columbia might be this big but if we don't reach out to families who are struggling in this way as this gap that community of homeless people will turn in to this group the president's budget has again targets for a lemonade she has a commodity supplemental food program last year the congress rejected this proposal and we hope you will again this last year massoud bank provided more than half a million pounds of c s f pay commodities so one thousand two hundred fifty low income seniors each month making a total of fifteen thousand distributions and our own site emergency c pantry four hundred of them come to me the second thursday they come in wheelchairs there and walters they greatly appreciate that  the elderly population in south carolina is more of our fastest growing populations and in thirty two states this program is very needed it's very appreciated in south carolina while we have it in six counties a desperately wish we had it in all forms i do not know where we will find the resources to help those who would lose the benefits of this program under the administration's budget please do not accept this proposal or the administration's suggestions for losing programs in a set who be able to be able to participate with food stamps or other programs this is simply not true many are ineligible or unable to access those stamps and those who are eligible will not be able to attain the same quantity and value of food they receive in their c s f be food packages at retail prices the elderly we serve love to get their bath it's important to them that how they receive fantasist cents unfortunately the administration's budget and farm bill proposals fall short for producing hunger and south carolina and leverage those private donations meanwhile since the enactment of the last farm bill bonus in surplus government donations to our programs has fallen bassam sixty percent nationwide at the same time requests for food assistance has increased by a percent or more nationally and at harvest health food bank we have had a thirty nine percent increase in the need for food due to hunger and food insecurity the  two thousand and eight budget resolution and the next farm bill offer an opportunity to strengthen the system of farm to table foreign nations for hungry as this committee deliberates on the fiscal year two thousand and eight budget resolution and how much will be provided for the new farm bill i respectfully ask this committee to reject the administration food stamp and three s f p budget proposals and provide adequate funding for the nutrition title of the next storm bill so that all of our needy families and children and elderly will find a place in the budget and that our farm bill conclusion chairman spratt and members of the committee i appreciate you allowing me to tell our story in south carolina those passions of feeding people as runty as i do across the entire nation our hope is the budget resolution will provide adequate discretionary funding for nutrition assistance program for fiscal year two thousand and eight and will also provide some new funding for the nutrition title of the next f arm bill your committee's continued support and leadership can pave the way toward ending hunger in america you know several years ago we had a wonderful opportunity in our food bank there was a lady who came in and she was suffering from cancer and she spent a little bit of extra time with our counselor but she had three little boys who came with her those three little boys were little precocious so we took them back to the packing area one of our volunteers did and allowed those little boys to pack their own bags of food to take home with them that day and i didn't realize that exactly that that's what they were packing but in the end as they were rolling their cart out to the church than that have brought them and their mother they are the middle little boy looked up at his older brother and said we've never have this much food before it kind of looks like christmas and the older little boy put his hand on his little brother shoulder and he said you know what that's what good people do to help people like us the hungry people in this nation are good people and you work with people and we need to work together to help them a huge very m point that that needs to be made and that is that you know we all type of balancing budgets and numbers and stuff like that but there are there are people behind these numbers and that and that when you make these adjustments or these reductions or you don't  keep the programs adjusted for inflation of people don't get to take advantage of some of these programs i mean people go without food and if you don't if you're not moved by the moral argument of making sure people in this country have enough to eat then you i know and as an adolescent and then as an adult you know are quite high and i think sometimes we don't make those connections you know i know you know i look at programs that address child hunger in america you know you look at programs like wic food stamps school lunches school breakfast summer feeding programs the commodity who several model program head start early start and so on none of them are adequately funded and so we got this little debate here well there you know we  have a little increase over last year's level but last year's level wasn't fully funded to meet the need and a little increase doesn't make the cover any but if food stamps and child nutrition programs were radical adequately funded would that be sufficient to improve the health and development of our children and if not what are the other sure survival issues your work has identified as necessary to a child's health and learning and and how can we in congress bring a more effective approach to addressing ch that even keeping the lights on in the southern tier is a huge issue and i'm keeping refrigeration so the food doesn't spoil and we have found that if you you know only seven a currently with the current funding and i understand it's going to cut a whole bunch sevent percent of eligible families get like inkling of energy assistance if you are eligible and don't get it in your baby there's a thirty percent greater chance that when you show up in emergency room you're going to be sick enough to be helpful and that's a pretty drastic tradeoff we've found similar things with this this is just published in pediatrics ok that if you are if you take a whole bunch of kids and they're all eligible for life even come eligible and but only seventeen percent of them get it because that's the level of the funding the program and then you say and then you can think about all the background differences and then you control that if you show up and if you're a baby who is eligible for why he's a kid under three and his family isn't getting at yours and you show up in an emergency room you're thirty percent more likely to be sick enough to have to be admitted to the hospital and again i can tell you that every admission even short ones are very expensive with fund a lot of why he did so and then we found quite similar effects with housing if you take people on a waiting list for what we call section eight and compare them to people are getting it so they were absolutely similar in terms range and that's also been published interviewed medical journal so it's we've been taught to do evidence based medicine i would i'm just i'm glad to have people here who are really interested in evidence based social policy we see a great correlation between children who are sick and children who are hungry when school is out and therefore free reduced breakfast and lunch is not available to children parents worry because it's not just one meal they are then replacing it's three and during those times you see great differences and the families that are coming in and to help just the you know when looking at them at the general health of them so nutrition is incredibly important to them eating is incredibly important to them for all the food banks within america's second harvest we focus on making sure that they have you know fruits and vegetables we in particularly in south carolina we have programs to where we are going the fields encourage the farmers during the extra crops in and let's give those out throughout all of our member agencies i think that's very very important to it and helping you know helping them to make those good choices about nutrition when the food stamp benefit is not enough i think certainly they do make choices because they do need to fill hungry stomachs that's what dr frank spoke of earlier you know it's it's much cheaper to buy the roman noodles ten cents a package but there's no help there so as i do think it is incumbent upon all of us to increase the health of all those populations that we do by providing them not only adequate supplies of food but good nutrition as well thank you mr chairman let me thank both of you i wish every member of congress and most pressing to heard your testimony i don't know the questions or have quit your testimony speaks for itself but i do want to share a couple points and ask one question probably coming to washington i served as a state superintendent schools in north carolina of eight years i know what you're talking about my wife was has just retired as a child nutrition director for county schools she consistently shared with me the you could always tell the child that was hungry because a well on friday and were first in the cafeteria on monday morning we are to have a breakfast program for every child in america and no matter what their background is that would do a lot for academics but it also helps some other issues one point i will share with you before i ask a question we have a program that we just kicked off join me in the last two years we have our state live we go bad we couldn't use it they get it immediately they can freeze it reprocess it and then they provide meals for families something just to think about i wish you had more money to do with that  let me ask you one question for both of you are in the vision to be in on this committee asked for a committee and realizing the dollars we need but there's anything that we need to do statutorily to change some things that you're working with that we can help make your job easier from the standpoint of things we do in agriculture the programs that flow to the local level if you don't know today check it out let me know which you would like to make the job easier and distribute the resources more readily because you are out there as my wife always reminds me when i to lawyers and law students and a good chunk of their time is spent helping people apply for food stamps and trying to deal with being irrationally turned down and stuff being lost it's i mean the that if you take a lawyer to get a low income family under food stamps and of course that's a boutique program you know i mean it's not a really really good use of money or you know a lot of time people's time i think speaks for itself that it's it's the only program where you don't people don't just have to account for their income but after account for their outlay and it's the documentation is so complex that it sometimes takes a lawyer i mean i can't do it thank you i would like to it was my colleagues with america's second harvest to respond to you on your question but one thing that does come to mind every food bank with america's second harvest we do not leave any stone unturned when it comes to gatherings and it is a partnership between private donations of food and dollars and the public assistance programs through the partners are a culture we greatly depend on both of those to supplement each other to put an end to hunger i know in the states have here a lot of we work very closely with local farmers and growers to bring fresh produce and you know our clients of our food pantries across the state really love that i think recognizing able to adequately recognize their donations and what all those donations do for us just them to correct much very tax benefit which is very important to them and it's very important to us because we depend on that says so readily but thank you i would like to get back use it and i'd be if you would share in your thinking on that because i can work out which all my colleagues find a way that we making get some companies to ramp up the process we had a member here by the name of authoritative testimony i've heard in twenty four years i'm sure is watching c span and i appreciate that the protocol and what needs to be done but it might be that we arrange for a video in all seriousness what we've done yes if we could and just and just because i think the secretary is is a is a person of generous spirit and i think it would be i think it i truly think would be useful for him i come here today hard on the heels of a farm forum i had at home in portland this weekend with one of my colleagues sam barr who from california who journeyed and we listen to people on a statewide basis come in and talk about what should happen with the farm bill and we had people from the wheat league and we had people from nutrition programs from schools people who are involved  a whole range of people but it's interesting the the subtext here is talking about how to put the pieces together in a way that made more sense and i deeply appreciate this testimony insecurity but it's really hungry yes i mean the extent to which you have ideas that you have road tested for us of helping us reframe the debate what is the hunger a quick want of the quote death tax that we might be able to drop into the political lexicon and help drive the discussion if you have some thoughts i would be very interested in that the notion of earlier you may have or not been here when i posed a question to the secretary about our practice of of shipping commodities overseas when at times this food drives local farmers out of this and that now the administration is looking at taking a few of these dollars not all of them not most of them but a fraction of them twenty five cents on the dollar perhaps and buying local food to help people self sufficient and doing it faster if we could use your thought about local produce local commodities that there might be some provision in the bill that w helps us buy food from local producers who would like to do that in some cases if they had some revenue stream for local produce local products they might be able to give slightly better prices i know that they involve in my community they're involved with cleaning and whatnot but we might be able to help stabilize local agriculture have a steady through for it put to help  round out the diet rather than relying on occasional c months of surplus commodities which may not really be what's necessary to provide the nutrition that is required in your thoughts in that regard would be helpful i'm on another committee where the chairman charlie rangle is driving an agenda in a very thoughtful fashion about the high cost for society of poor people and one of my particular areas of interest is that the poor actually pay more and more for love standard health care they pay more for food more for me out they pay more for their mortgages i mean if these are working people and i would like to maybe try and get you in touch with the ways and means committee staff because i think mr chairman there may be something in work charlie's doing with poverty that may be able to there may be some tax elements that might make a difference not just in the budget  in the budget committee the streamlining the process that was offered up we were oregon was ranked as one of the two most food insecure states it was brutal it was it was it was  shameful we found that the most single most effective thing we did to move us to the middle of the pack in work is to try and negotiate this goofy process somebody told me it was almost as as complicated to apply for food stamps as for an opec the private overseas investment loan of millions of dollars in terms of a streamlined that we've really made it hard on these folks so your notion of the streamlining and last but not least i would urge that you redouble your efforts with your national network i mean you've got amazing compatriots around the country who are starting to make progress with the local food banks with people in the agriculture community academics and if there's a way that we can work with you in broadening the national advocacy i thought with this was amazingly compelling and i hope that there ways that we can think about ways to link out so this happens well clearly around the country as our fellow members are having their own hearings and workshops about the farm bill that we make sure that what you represent is there in force thank you very much mean there are it's true i mean poor people pay more for worse food in our state you know the wick farmers markets our tears are ten bucks for the whole summer and we did have a steak farmer's market program that when they went under i mean it's really simple stuff like well suppose we doubled the farmer's market factors and also for the elderly that would certainly mean that there'd be more people buying pride is from local farmers i mean i'm no economist i'm just a doctor but and me seems kind of in south carolina we and many states across the nation they have what is called the snap program a supplemental nutrition assistance program and north carolina know there's a want a very good one and we in south carolina are trying to model and request a supplemental nutrition assistance program with our site legislature the proposals there was follow the north carolina work where it says the state allocates some money to help food banks purchase locally grown foods to help supplement the supply that we have we would very much like to see that in south carolina many states have been very successful with it and i guess the critical piece of that is all of the supplies of food and it does for us with food banks we work hard to have a good mixture from every parents and they are already unbelievably session is very difficult for working families because they have to they have to recertify much more often and this is the disaster it's really seems to you know for all the piety about people playing by the rules why would you take food away from families who are playing by the rules trying to get off welfare trying to get re told to enter the job market i don't get it i mean you can tell you if you take away food stamps and people who had it you can guarantee their kids will be more food insecure and be in poor health i mean with you know that's a repetitive pattern they also looks like from the big kid data which eyes in my data they'll do worse in school so if you already have the information i think you could extrapolate chairman on threat eliminating food stamp categorical eligibility would hurt tens of thousands of families and south carolina that are currently receiving f right and if if you two hundred eighty thousand families that's five hundred plus thousand plus children is half a million children at least depending on the the hurt would be it would be felt like a lot to work with here and and and again i mean i think the challenge for us is to try to get people to feel the urgency that we have to deal with this issue and that it's not just a moral issue i mean if you want to be fiscally responsible it is an issue that you have to deal with and it is not sufficient to say that well we have increased this program by a half a percentage point or a or percentage point the question is are we meeting the need and and the other thing is you know if you take if you take away you know food stamps for you know working families they may not be working families very much longer they may have to go on to some other sort of assistance because they won't you know they just can't afford it anymore so this has been very very very helpful