Key Priorities Funded in Bush Budget

April 26, 2001

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman says the USDA budget proposal for fiscal 2002 includes "sufficient funding to carry out key priorities" even though the spending plan seeks "to get the growth of spending under control." She testified Wednesday before the Senate agricultural appropriations subcommittee.

Those "key priorities" include "making sure we have the funding and legal authorities we need to strengthen our agricultural quarantine inspection activities and combat pest and disease infestations"; providing the overseas market intelligence and technical expertise needed to support agricultural trade; implementing a new Agricultural Risk Protection Act to provide farmers improved crop insurance "as soon as possible"; providing adequate funding for food safety activities, particularly the meat and poultry inspection workforce of the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

Other points of emphasis in the budget, she added, include supporting food assistance programs at levels consistent with the anticipated need for those programs; providing adequate funding for USDA's rural development activities, "with particular emphasis on water and sewer facilities; rural housing; and efforts to improve the access of rural areas to technology, particularly the Internet"; providing continuing support to landowners, farmers, and ranchers through conservation programs; and "redirecting USDA research into important, new areas. "

Veneman told the subcommittee, "By any measure, this is a responsible, yet restrained budget. It meets the President's objectives of slowing the growth of federal spending, funding urgent national priorities, achieving historic levels of debt reduction and providing tax relief." Faced with that reality, she added, "we have tried very hard to provide adequate funding for the most urgent issues facing American agriculture."

For 2002, USDA is requesting an increase of $174 million in appropriations for Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service programs "which will allow us to continue emergency programs underway in 2001" to prevent animal diseases from reaching the United States, Veneman said. "Specifically, we are requesting almost a 40% increase over 2000 levels for the Agricultural Quarantine Inspection (AQI) Program in order to increase the level of inspections along U.S. borders and ports of entry."