To Members of the NASULGC Family:

This memorandum provides a report on two meetings that the leadership of the Budget and Advocacy Committee (BAC) of NASULGC's Board on Agriculture Assembly held with key officials of the Bush administration (including USDA Deputy Secretary Jim Moseley) earlier this week. Attending one or both of the meetings on behalf of the BAC were:

	Tom Payne, University of Missouri (BAC Chair)
	Fred Cholick, South Dakota State University (BAC Vice Chair)
	Vic Lechtenberg, Purdue University, (Incoming BAC Vice Chair)
	Bobby Phills, Florida A&M University
	Sam Donald, University of Maryland - Eastern Shore
	Tim Sanders, BRT
	Fred Hutchison, BRT

USDA - Deputy Secretary Jim Moseley
The BAC leadership team met with Jim Moseley, Colien Hefferan (CSREES), and other USDA officials on Monday, July 28. The meeting lasted approximately one hour and constituted the first such meeting that Mr. Moseley had held with outside groups to discuss the department's F.Y. 2005 USDA budget situation.

Mr. Moseley and Ms. Hefferan listened carefully as the BAC group outlined the priorities that the BAC has tentatively identified for CSREES in F.Y. 2005, including:

	A five percent increase in formula funds.
	An increase in competitive grant line items.
	Major increases in facilities and capacity-building line items and modest increases for other minority-serving institutions accounts.
	Priority focus on the EFNEP line item.

Mr. Moseley made complimentary comments on all of these priorities and expressed his willingness to work closely with the NASULGC family to advance all. He did, however, remind the group that current and projected budget conditions made major increases in any USDA programs difficult at best.

The BAC group then outlined the four "themes" or "areas of emphasis" that we would use to justify these requests:

	Understanding the links between human health and nutrition, with a particular emphasis on the problem of obesity.
	Protecting natural resources from natural or introduced threats.
	Enhancing environmental stewardship through new agricultural technologies and approaches.
	Helping American agriculture transform itself from a commodity-based to more of a product-based system.

Mr. Moseley expressed his personal interest in the obesity issue and said that he would like to see an interagency working group established to address this issue. He noted that USDA only had a portion of the jurisdiction over obesity and other departments and agencies also have significant roles to play.

OMB - Ag Branch Chief Adrienne Erbach
A meeting -- similar in structure and content -- was then held with Adrienne Erbach Lucas, the OMB examiner with jurisdiction over all agriculture programs and Noah Engelberg, the examiner over CSREES. Ms. Erbach and Mr. Engelberg are very familiar with the CSREES programs and have met with the BAC leadership previously.

Ms. Erbach expressed pleasure in the fact that the BAC was able to boil down its CSREES request to a few key items. She underscored what Mr. Moseley had said that it would be extremely unlikely that the administration would propose any significant increases in the F.Y. 2005 budget. (She called it a "zero sum" exercise.) However, she encouraged the group to stay in close contact with Mr. Moseley, Ms. Hefferan, and other key USDA officials including Under Secretary Joe Jen and Deputy Under Secretary Rod Brown.

When asked by Bobby Phills if having the full weight of NASULGC behind the minority-serving institutions would be helpful, she replied: "Absolutely. I'm really glad to see you have focused your request."

The Bottom Line
Bush administration officials appreciate the fact that NASULGC has narrowed its CSREES requests for F.Y. 2005 to a few key priorities, supported by some compelling themes. Unfortunately, extreme budgetary pressures -- reminiscent in Ms. Erbach's words "of the mid-1990s" -- make significant increases unlikely.

For F.Y. 2004 we made a strong case for defensible increases in base funds and the National Research Initiative. Our efforts were in large measure responsible for heading off major reductions in the overall appropriations for NASULGC priority accounts -- even in the face of a 4.8 percent reduction in funds available to the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee. We will need to redouble our efforts and focus to maintain and increase NASULGC priority accounts for F.Y. 2005 and beyond.