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To Members of the NASULGC Family:
The House Subcommittee on Agriculture Appropriations met this
afternoon at 3:00 pm and marked up the F.Y. 2004 Agriculture
Appropriations bill. As you are aware from previous
communications, the 302(b) allocation for this bill was cut
drastically. Here is Tim Sander's explanation of the allocation
constraints:
The Ag allocation is actually much worse than it appears. The
"official" release suggests that the allocation is $393 million
below last year's level. What the release doesn't explain is that
in F.Y. 2003, the House Appropriation Committee limited spending
from the Export Enhancement Program (EEP). This action prohibited
USDA from spending $450 million, and the "savings" was "given" to
the Ag subcommittee as additional spending authority "over and
above" the allocation. The EEP program does not exist this year,
and so the Committee can not repeat the action. This means that
the ACTUAL spending level for the Ag bill this year is $843
million below last year. This translates into a 4.8% reduction.
Not surprisingly, the subcommittee's action this afternoon
resulted in significant reductions in many of the programs funded
through the Ag appropriations bill. That is the BAD news. The good
news is that most of the line-items of concern to the NASULGC
family within the CSREES budget were funded at either the lower of
the level in the President's F.Y. 2004 request or the F.Y. 2003
bill as enacted.
In addition, Ag Appropriations Subcommittee chair Henry Bonilla
(R-TX) started the hearing by saying, publicly, that "I am sorry
that our allocation did not enable us to provide an increase in
the base funds for CSREES, as I had wanted."
While we have not obtained a copy of the subcommittee's proposed
report language, we have been able to ascertain the "numbers." We
have placed them in a spreadsheet and posted it on the nasulgc-bac
web site.
We will report additional details when they become available. The
full House Appropriations Committee is expected to markup the bill
next week.
Fred Hutchison and Tim Sanders
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