OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN LARRY COMBEST
Good morning and welcome to everyone here.
I would like to thank the representatives of the Department of
Agriculture who are here to respond to our questions. While we
may have some critical questions later I also want to say a sincere
word of thanks up front for all of the other USDA personnel in
Washington and in all of the state and county offices around the
country for the countless hours of hard work that went into implementing
this new program and conducting this signup. As a former county
USDA employee I know how much work goes into something like this
and I know that it too often goes unnoticed. So, thank you very
much.
This hearing is being conducted to examine
the Department's recent announcement of the acceptance of 16.2
million acres into the CRP following the 15th general
signup. This is another in the series of hearings that I had promised
would be conducted to ensure that the views of members of this
Subcommittee are heard as USDA implements the CRP which we reauthorized
in the 1996 farm bill. Over the last few months there has been
and will probably continue to be considerable debate over the
Department's decisions concerning the future of this program.
It has been said several times that this is the most successful
environmental program USDA has conducted and one of the most important
environmental programs government-wide. We could go back through
all of those praises of this program but there are probably plenty
of questions Members would like to discuss.
While the Secretary has committed in general
terms to conduct another signup in the fall of the year we do
not know what to expect from that signup. My main concern is that
we are leaving a lot of environmental protection on the table
by only re-enrolling 16 million acres into the program in this
signup when the budget authority is there to do much more. However,
there is no compelling reason why we should wait to correct this
inadequacy. A letter was sent to the Secretary yesterday by several
Members of Congress urging him to accept at least an additional
3 million acres under the terms of the 15th signup.
I look forward to discussing my concerns.