talking a little bit about congress but if you look back to the entire report of our commission on political reform we did take on several issues. one was congress electoral system and services and in our section on the electoral system, we did talk about redistricting and we had to get agreement of republicans and democrats on the commission and did feel some things to be done better in that regard. first, let me tell you, as a political scientists, i think these are important questions but political science tells you you're still not going to have districts competitive or everyone in the middle. part of what's gone on in america is congress is left and right and people live together and concentrated, democrats live in democratic neighborhoods. republicans live so the drawing of the lines won't fix all of that. we came up with a process that we thought was fair and several recommendations. one is that both party vs an investment in redistricting.

too often it is one party power and sticks it to the other party. and then secondly i know you mentioned geographic concerns. we try to putt some other limitations on the map drawing process by requiring districts to be drawn more according to county lines or natural geographic features rather than just these crazy districts that squiggle around. that's not -- you know not easy to do but one thing it does is makes it possible -- impossible for people to be too key yative. some of the districts are very, very creative and having little bit more limitation on the process, open process about how to redistrict we are for. we weren't willing to go as some people say to go to california or arizona which have models which are more completely out of the political process. they have turned it over to citizens. they don't want the legislature or the parties involved. our commission really believed that having both parties have a

say in those maps made sense but we did agree with you in many ways redistricting the lines are part of the solution. >> talking with john fortier the democracy project director for the bipart son policy center. the group put together recommendations to improve congress. they're now out with an index of how this 114th congress has done in the first six months. so we're now turning to all of you to have you take part in the conversation, as well. what do you think? how do you improve congress? pennsylvania, sharon is next, a republican. >> caller: hello and thank you, c-span, for taking my call. i think we could limit the terms that they run for. like, two terms and that is it. i think most of these congressmen have been in office for 15 years 25 years. i mean they get too comfortable with the lobby. and to be honest, i'm really

disgusted with congress. i don't think they've done anything, anything in the eight years that this president has been in office. it's a continual fight. and it's really frustrating to watch them every day. they absolutely do nothing. and i feel sorry for obama. >> okay. let's -- i mean, part of this point that you do in this index is for people to be able to have metrics to measure congress. she said they've done nothing. how many bills have they passed? >> we don't actually measure that. we're too early to say. there's a number out there. i don't know it. we're measuring more the proeszcess of getting through committee. there have been successes. major deals on trade. a framework for debating iran even though the parties will disagree on that. we have seen changes in education. elementary and secondary education act passing surprising people.

we have seen a little bit more hope in this congress. if i turn to the question about term limits which the caller brought up, you know, i think here our commission debated this and we didn't -- we didn't share your concern for term limits. we were worry edied somewhat in the other direction. the court said you have to amend the constitution to limit the terms of members. that is hard to do. we have seen it in some state legislatures and one worry is you take away the expertise of members that they build up over a long period of time. some would say, boy the system is corrupt and lobbyists are too in bed with members of the congress or legislature and what the research has shown is opposite. if you have members of congress brand new and don't know as much and experienced they're much more subject to the influences of a few lobbying or a few interest who have their ear. we did not -- we didn't come down against it strongly but we

certainly were not for term limits on the commission. we think having experience in the legislature is valuable in terms of getting things done. >> citizen on twitter says this, congress always lags behind public's common sense awareness. congressional outrage emerges suddenly after an event. where were they? stan in baltimore, democrat, you are next, good morning. >> caller: the previous caller has my complete opinion and i still believe that term limits would make a difference. yes, it could be a small issue with inexperience, but everybody going to be inexperienced. and you've got people going in the congress and in the senate who have been there for 25 30 or more years. that's ridiculous. i do not believe that the founding fathers that i hear these people talk about all the time wanted these people to make a career out of being a senator

or congressman. there is no way that anybody could prove that to me. >> all right. that's stan in baltimore. eric is next, democrat in virginia. hi. >> caller: hi. term limits are a horrible idea. it is like telling a doctor to retire after 20 years of learning the trade. and people just don't understand how complex the legislative process is but you definitely need the expertise. second, i think the most fundamental problem that i have observed in congress is particularly in the house. it's structured in such a way that you can't build consensus. so much power is vested in the majority that the minority has no incentive to cut deals or to reach compromise or consensus. their objective has to be to get in power again because they have virtually no control. we have seen the senate headed in that direction, also, and

skrult we have seen reduced. so i think it's a structural problem with respect to how congress is arranged. >> john fortier. >> i think your analysis is good in a way and goes back to the very beginnings of our country and how we conceived of the igs tuitions. the house always thought of much mf of a majority institution. elected every two years on short terms. react to public opinion. could really change in one election. the senate has to change over several elections smaller body, often requires more consensus. part of the frarmmer's genius is two bodies, being in the moibt in the house is not a great experience because you are really subject much more to the whims of the majority who are able to pass things over your objection. but we do call for the committee process, a more open debate process on the floor the conference committees, that's all a place where the majority

and minority could have more input. within that framework, i don't think you ever see the house be quite the place that has the ability to debate or the role of the minority that the senate does but we think it could be improved in a legislative and we think we have seen some directions in that process. that's a place where minority members can make their views heard. >> lailany democrat. good morning to you. >> caller: hi, good morning. basically congress is just become a cash cow for people who lie to us around election time or whether it's every two or six years. with the united states senate races or quite frankly whether it's every four years for the presidency. i just don't understand how the american people can put up with this. this is just absolutely -- it's just horrible. horrible to fit in -- be subjected to the amount of

gridlock that we the people don't belong dealing with. i mean it's just horrible. and i -- i don't think there's any solution. i mean the constitutional amendment process is almost impossible. it's just -- people have given up really. they have given up. >> all right. we'll take those sentiments. >> congress is very unpopular. your views is not uncommon. we have seen approval ratings as low as 9% or so. it is up a little bit from that now. i think congress suffers from the way it's built, that it is not one voice. the president you may like the president's policies or not like the president's policies but the president speaks with one voice. the congress with many. it is difficult. the framers made it difficult to get minorities, different elections and two bodies and then the president's cignasignature to get something done. that's not as easy as some countries with more of a single parliament where the executive

is part of that. so i think that's part of the frustration. given that, though i think that there are ways to work within that. again, what we are calling for here is some process where all of those voices are better heard. getting the voices of 100 senators and 435 representatives from 2 different parties that disagree on a lot of things to come to a common agreement is a hard thing. but some common sense measures how the process could work better would make the process better. i don't expect congress to jump way up in approval ratings but i do see some hope now and i see the process will allow the legislative process to go forward and never -- always be considered messier than the executive branch. >> question for all of you, how would you improve congress? doug in new york, what are your thoughts? >> caller: my thoughts would be to amend the constitution and have president obama serve a

third term. and as far as this commission or this gentleman, i'm wondering about him having senator lott as a part of that commission when he is quite a divisive person. and was he convicted of some political shenanigans? i'm not clear on that one. but i do wish that the constitution would be amended so that the president could serve a third term. it's the only chance we have as a nation. >> okay. i'm not sure what you were referring to coming the former senator trent lott. >> we did have members of both parties. we thought it was commission that this be broadly representative and your viewers may find some of the members were more conservative than they were or liberal than they were but that was the point really. we didn't want a commission of people that just agreed with each other but across the spectrum spectrum.

the point of term limits for the president, we didn't take it up but i think it's a good one. we put in a amendment to the constitution after franklin roosevelt won four terms thinking that was too much. soopz you start a second term everyone knows that you can't run for a third term. and some of your power as president, power of persuasive, the power to come back and win another election is gone. so i -- our commission didn't take that on. i personally agree with you. i think it's better to run for a third term or maybe even a fourth term and let the people decide. i think you would find very few people going that far. running for three terms. we had for many years a tradition started by washington and jefferson that they would serve a couple of terms but they wouldn't go longer than that. i think that was a better situation than we are today where there's the tradition and there was no fixed rule to run again. the president really can amass more persuasive power if he may

run again, may have to go to the people and congress will -- who also goes to the people has to deal with the president in a different way. >> dry creek, west virginia, john, a republican, you are next, john. >> caller: yes. thank you for taking my call. i think as a former schoolteacher, as a retired schoolteacher, we have taught our kids that compromise was the best way to get something mutually agreed upon. but we have a president now that demands everything his way and still -- instead of compromising. >> all right john. i'll leave it there. >> well again the system that we have of a separation of powers is frustrating if for one of the players you feel is not willing to go along. and so for those who don't like what congress is doing or those who don't like the president it's a messy, messy process.

i do think that again forcing the players to have a more open debate that is in congress getting more input from across the aisle getting something before it gets to the president's desk will give it a greater chance of getting it done. may bring the president to the table, this president or another president. it is not the end all, be all answer, process. there's still the strong feelings and strongly held convictions of the players in the various positions. but we do think that the president does play an important role here and for the president to come, we mentioned earlier on certain days to meet with congress, to spend more time in the legislative process and for the congress to have a more robust process would mitigate that problem a bit. >> new york, kyle, independent what are your thoughts? >> caller: yeah, hi. i think we have heard a lot of the same thoughts and frustrations and i think the people are concentrating on the actual election instead of the legislative process. i think that's right. i think one way we could take

away the incumbent's damage is to make it illegal to directly solicit campaign contributions. we could call it the graham-trump bill. what do you think of that? >> well you know, our commission did take up this issue of money and politics or campaign finance. we had a broad-based participation and some smaller agreement on the problems and the solution. we did not have a grand set of recommendations on campaign finance. one thing our members agreed on this was really true of republicans and democrats, members of congress are spending too much time raising money. there's always a balance between how much time you spend legislating, homeland constituents and the need to run for election. part is raising money. but our members thought that balance shifted too far. now, as to what to do about it, some states in the legislatures

will say that you can only raise money when the legislature is not in session, not wanting to make the connection of people passing laws and receiving campaign contributions. we didn't decide that. for or against. and we really didn't find a way to come to a solution because the parties i think have some different views of campaign finance reform when's the right way to go, but they felt it was a problem and finding a way to get members spending more time legislating and less time raising money and more time concentrated here in washington was important. >> all right. a couple of minutes left here. monica in baltimore democrat good morning. you're on the air. >> caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call. going back to what the guest speaker said, campaign finance, the elected officials spend time raising money and not surprised you didn't find a solution on that issue because they were elected with these corporations'

money and so why would they want to vote against or find a solution against the thing, the money that's putting them in power? you know? i think we need to look at citizens united again and see, like, money is really corrupting our political system. it is impairing our ability to pass legislation. even though we have all these voices, you know we have so many systems and checks and systems and thrown off by all of these other interests for economic development and -- >> okay. so, monocar, i'll leave it there to squeeze in judy in new york, a democrat, good morning. go ahead. share your thoughts. >> caller: yes, good morning. i'll go down my list. no term limits. up to the people to vote people out. makes people lazy. we need to get rid of the republicans out of congress because they're obstructing. we should be listening to elizabeth warren's speech i heard the other day. at net roots. it should be 51 votes in the

senate. we need to change the way we do elections. money should not be speech. that means somebody with a lot of money has more speech pan i do with very little money. you know what? listen to the people. when 70% want gun control and let different things that they're not listening to the people. that's because of gerrymandering. million more republicans -- i mean, democrats voted for in our last congress and yet the republicans had the majority. that's just ridiculous. >> okay. john fortier, what did you hear there? >> from your list, i'll take the campaign finance question again. i think the caller illustrates different opinions on how to reform the system. some would be and more on the left, public financing, money to campaign and not private sources or equalizing the amounts limiting the amounts to equal amounts of people to raise. i think certainly on the more republican and libertarian side

you have some worries that maybe the limits are too low that we should have higher limit that is alaw people to go out and raise some disclosed amounts of money but at larger chunks and maybe not spend so much time raising as worried about raising lots and lots of $2,000 checks and less time with higher limits and the parties were stronger. we did worry you mentioned outside groups. that was a concern of our members. that the outside independent groups are spending a lot of money on campaigns. we didn't have a solution for that but i think both parties worried about this. >> we have to leave it there. john fortier direct of the democracy project. thank you for your time. >> thank you. secretary of state john kerry and treasury secretary jack lew on capitol hill to testify about the iran nuclear agreement. since the deal was announced last week, the focus of many republicans members of congress has been on whether inspections of facilities in iran within 24 hours would be enough to detect

any nuclear activity. some of them think the deal should include anywhere any time inspection access. the 60-day clock for congress to review the accord began on monday. and the senate foreign relations committee holds the hearing live at 10:00 a.m. here on c-span3. considered underrated by many first lady historians, caroline harrison was an artist that took up china painting and establishing the china collection. she was interested in women's issues and helped raise funds for johns hopkins university on the condition it admit women and the first president general of the daughters of the american revolution until she died in the white house from tuberculosis. caroline harrison, this sunday night at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span's original series "first lady: influence and image"

examining the public and private lives of the women that filled the position of first lady and the influence on the presidency. sundays at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3. a new epa rule gives federal agencies authority to protect some streams, wetdlands and tributaries under the clean water act. until the rule, small bodies of water under state jurisdiction. some farmers and agricultural operations say this could force them to obtain expensive federal permits or face stiff civil penalties. up next the house agriculture committee with a hearing about the impact of agriculture secretary tom vilsack. this is two hours 15 minutes.

>> well good morning. this is a committee onhearing on the committee of agriculture. rick? >> thank you, mr. chairman. father i bow humbly before you thankful for every blessing of life, this country that you have given us and mindful of the great responsibility you charged with us. just ask that everything that's said and done here be pleasing in your sight and ask that you help us to be civil in our discourse and discerning in our comments and dialogue, father. i just pray it all in jesse helms' name amen. >> thank you rick. i want to thank the secretary vilsack for coming to be with us this morning. he has a hard stop at 12:15. he's got cabinet responsibilities to do. mr. secretary, thanks, very much for being here this morning. be careful on your knee there on

the table. want to welcome him. i want to say at the start of this, he and his staff worked really hard to fulfill the multitude of committee requests for oversight information that we have flooded them with over the last seven months and appreciate their cooperation and efforts to do that and work with us our team on that. congress's responsibility under the constitution and in house rules that each of the authorizing committees conduct oversight over the executive branch areas of their jurisdiction. the american people demand that we hold our government accountable for the responsible stewardship of the taxpayers dollars. today as identified by the inspector general and the government accountability office. i'd like to say a few words about the ib spector fong. served since 2002. the office works hard with

audits and investigations each year aimed to make the department more efficient. the investigations snap cases ensure that those engaged in fraud do not prey on the most vulnerable. i want to thank inspector general fong for working with the committee. oversight is essential to deterring waste fraud and abuse. government employees must remember each time they award a grant it's the ees's the taxpayers' money they're spending. we focused on the farm service program and the office of advocacy and outreach grants and cooperative agreements awarded 2010 and 2011. fsa intended to the program to modernize to farmers and ranchers. unfortunately, mismanaged as evidenced by the fact of $140 million over budget and 2 of the 5 planned core functions. july of 2014 mr. secretary, you

signed a memorandum seeking develop on midas. we agree with that that makes sense. this maintenance of midas alone is costly. today we expect to hear about the path forward on the delivery of programs. i.t. management across government deemed a high risk area by gao. the committee wants to see the department of agriculture implement the identified best practices and hold the responsible parties accountable. this committee will continue to monitor the work of both the u.s.d.a. chief information officer and discuss today as i mentioned the office of advocacy and outreach, the award of grants an agreements under that program between 2010 and 2011 and that office under the direction of then assistant director of management awarded approximately $40 million in grants and cooperative agreements on a noncompetitive basis. and essence, mr. secretary, gave taxpayers dollars away and this is alarming. i know it is to you as well.

those responsible be held can'tible. i agree. look forward to visit with you this morning about the expectation of that recommendation. based on the public outcry of the scandal of taxpayers dollars, the american people want you to hold responsible those individuals violates that trust. we -- mr. secretary, thank you and your staff again. thank you for being here and i yield to the ranking member for any opening comments he has to make. >> thank you, mr. chairman. welcome, mr. secretary. back to the ag committee. appreciate you being here. oversight is a responsibility of committee takes very seriously. having an open dialogue is open not just so operating in the best interest of the constituents but implementing programs as congress intended. a few areas that we are specifically looking at today include the operations of office

of outreach and advocacy creating by the 2008 farm bill. awarding strike force initiative and section 2501 grants and 2010 and 2011 and the farmer initiative and the long delayed development of midas the fsa commuter system jaup grade. since the secretary joining us today i wouldn't be surprised if members use this opportunity to address others may be happening in the district such as the aifian flu situation which is impacted many of my poultry producers and others across the region. i have appreciated the department's efforts in this regard. thus far, they have been doing a good job and i'm looking forward to an update on the future plans within the department their response if we have another outbreak occurring this fall. again, mr. chairman, i thank you for holding today's hearing. u.s.d.a. has a large department

which can make adequate oversight a different task and i think we all want the department to be running effectively and efficiently as possible and the secretary has a big job and we had a discussion yesterday and he was telling me that they do 7.5 billion transactions a year in the department. am i right about that? that's a pretty astounding. so bound to have a couple glitches here and there. thank you. i yield back. >> thank the gentleman. chairman, excuse me, secretary vilsack, thank you again for being here. the microphone is yours sir. >> mr. secretary -- mr. chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and to the ranking member, as well. given the interest of time and the number of members who are going to participate in this committee meeting, mr. chairman, i wander if i could defer my opening remarks and perhaps maybe use a bit of my time that i'm saving to extend an answer if that becomes necessary so that everyone gets a chance to ask the questions they need to

ask. >> well thank you mr. secretary. i appreciate that. thousands and thousands of great employees at your department get up every single day, go to work, try to do the very best they can for the taxpayers, beneficiaries they serve but the actions of a few taint everybody and so the conversation this morning will be about those few opposed to being able to brag on all the rest of folk who is do a good job and every organization's got the few bad apples we have got to understand what happens to them and the deterrence factor and the fact that things should happen to folks who do breach the public trust so let's talk a little bit about pearly reed. i believe an undersecretary in charge of spending a lot of money. the special agent that is conducted that investigation discovered in addition to the 40 million in grants appear to have been granted without competition, that mr. reed also was able to direct either by

himself or through some other folks a relatively significant amount of money, $275,000 plus to an individual in which he had a fiscal relationship with. mr. reed resigned i guess 2012. did you ask for his rezsignation or did he do that on his own? >> mr. chairman i became aware of concerns about mr. reed's handling of the incidents and the account that is you've just addressed by virtue of hotline tip that we received. based on that tip, i asked immediately for the oig to investigate. the oig produced what's called a fast report indicating some reports they had. not a compromise report. i indicated to him we were disappointed in what we had initially learned about this. and following that conversation, mr. reed left the employment of

the u.s.d.a. >> i thank you. i believe that the overall investigation led to a recommendation by the agency to refer to justice department. can you visit with us about that and why if you know justice chose not to pursue criminal actions? >> mr. chairman, following mr. reed leaving the office then the oig continued its review of activities involving 2501 an strike force involving mr. reed. and they took a good deal of time obviously to complete the report. when the report was completed we basically requested the department of justice of to take a look at this. i believe it was referred down to the department of justice down in arkansas and the u.s. attorney in arkansas chose not to prosecute. i can't share with you today because i don't know the specific reasons for why he chose not to prosecute. but that decision makes it difficult if not impossible for us to take any further with

reference to mr. reed because of the code of federal regulations, specifically 180.2.110 that basically outlines processes that we could take if there is a criminal judgment or civil judgment. obviously, there is beneather in this case. and so as a result, we are where we are today. we focused our attention frankly, mr. chairman, after we received the fast report and after we received the full report on fulfilling the recommendations that oig outlined in terms of improvements to the programs and i can tell you today they're fundamentally different than they were in 2010, 2011. >> all right. those processes, could this individual be -- when's the phrase? suspension or disbarment so that -- i understand under the bush administration he was a consultant to the government. can he be prevented from coming under a contract? >> under the code of conduct i

cited, there has to be a criminal judgment or a civil judgment. and in other words, a court of law has to make a determination that something inappropriate occurred. and based on that judgment and determination, you're then empowered under the code of federal regulations to stake steps. we don't have that in this particular circumstance. >> okay. >> mr. reed, to be fair to mr. reed, he did serve the nrcs in a capacity for a number of years at the federal government before coming back as the assistant secretary of administration and the reason i asked him to do that in 2009 was because or department had a very serious problem with civil rights which we wanted to address. >> i believe you mentioned this came to our attention on a hotline tip, a whistle-blower tip. can you walk us through that attitude toward the

whistle-blowers? >> well, obviously we encourage folk who is are seeing activity that is inappropriate to notify us notify their supervisor notify people in charge of concerns that they may have. that's why we have the hotline process to be able to do that in a way that doesn't necessarily compromise your ability and your relationship with other co-workers. and we take these things very seriously. by virtue of the fact when that hotline tip occurred, my -- it came to my attention immediately and first action was to ask the inspector general to look into it. we are not -- i have said to my folks, i'm not concerned about people making mistakes. but i want to know what they are and i want to be able to fix them if there's a problem i want to know what it is and i want to know it as soon as i can. because we are very interested in the job that we have and i take very seriously what you said at the outset which is that we have a responsibility to taxpayers to make sure that the resources are spent appropriately and unfortunate and disappointing when that

doesn't occur. >> thank you, mr. secretary. ranking member, five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. you know back in when i was chairman, i had meetings with some of your computer people. i thought at the time, you know, they brought in a couple new people, that they were on track to get this thing straightened out. you know in but they were having funding challenges. and, you know, as i understand, i think that there's been an uneven kind of deal going on with the funding of that. is that -- how much of that uneven funding and not being able to plan had to do with the problems that happened there in the midas situation? >> well, congressman i would -- you know, i was reading the good gook the other day and in proverbs there's a couple suggestions a wise man measures his steps and has many counselor counselors. with reference to midas, we didn't measure our steps and

didn't have as many counselors as we needed frankly. starting in 2007 2008, i think the vision was pretty grand. i don't think people fully appreciated the difficulty of basically implementing that in the context of a 1980s system which is basically what we have. this is a huge understood taking. 11 million customers. 5 million farmers. 8.1 million farms and 38 million tracks of land. so it's a huge undertaking. and frankly, we didn't have at the outset what we have today which is a process of review and many, many hands and many eyes basically watching this. and doing this in an incremental way. so budgeting was an issue. the's no question about that but also the way in which it was originally structured and the way in which we failed to recognize that there was a different vision in kansas city where some of this work was going to be done and a different vision in d.c. and as a result of that

conflict things didn't get set up as they should have. we have made progress and we do have some benefit from midas today. a farmer can walk into an fsa office today in any county in the country and facilitate and see all of the records regardless of where that land might be located. that was not the case before. we also have installed our business integrity efforts which will allow us to reduce errors and mistakes and we are now working collaborateively on the greatway program to take the next step to allow folks to do to the work at home they want to do. progress has been made. but it clearly wasn't implemented in the way that i think people envisioned at the beginning. and we have addressed those issues by establishing a process within the cio's office for review, a more functioning e-board. and weekly and now biweekly

reports to me directly about the status of midas, about the status of the gateway program and about the status of accuracy, the next step. >> have we gotten rid of the 400s and the system 36s? are they gone? >> well i don't think that -- i don't think that they're totally gone and that's one of the complications. it is essentially we have sort of meshed and merged systems. which may explain why we're going to have to continue from time to time to patch and put resources into the system. this gets back to this different vision and different focus between the folks in kansas city and the folks in d.c. >> right. >> which we have addressed. >> thank you. as you know, first of all, i want to thank you and the department abe the work of dr. cliff tord did and done and continued to do helping us with our aifian influenza situation and hits my district probably harder than anybody and there's concerns out there and i think

you have been pretty good addressing those as they come along. wasn't a perfect situation but in a crisis it's not going to be perfect. but one of the concerns i'm hearing now is these inconsistencies in payment indemnity payments that you know we appreciate what you're doing and i think you have been doing it out of the ccc and omb supporting you and seems to be working. but apparently there are different indemnity payments for high path aifian versus low path aifian influenza and i guess it's low path in virginia i guess. so, and under the regulations apparently egg layers are compensated for future egg production according to the low path regulations but the high path regulations are silent. in that aspect. and so the turkey folks, you know, are wondering you know, why they're not compensated and for what would be the full cost

of the bird kind of similar to what is happening with the egg production under the low path and so are you looking at that? is there a way to bring consistency to that situation? >> well the quick answer is we are looking at it. we recognize that there is a difference between low path and high path and there ought not to be. we also are taking a look at whether or not we could create some kind of more uniform system based on the size of the operation in terms of cleaning and upkeep expense as well, because there's obviously some confusion of who gets paid to do what relative to disinfection and cleaning. this is a process that i think we are looking at and we are hopeful that we get this thing in a better place and a more consistent place before the fall and why we have set up a task force i instructed be set up for ways to be better prepared in the fall. >> thank you.

and again thank you and the department for the work that you have done. yield back. >> mr. lucas for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman and mr. secretary, i have to echo the comments of chairman and the ranking member about the challenges you and the department faced in implementing a rather dramatic change. really, i think in most areas it is quite fundamentally amazing how successful that's been but like anything i have a few questions, mr. secretary in a number of areas. one of the things i'm curious about $100 million provided for the implementation of title i to be cruised for filling staff positions due to the increased work of ark and plc. how much of that money was used? and if you could, perhaps in a follow-up if necessary, but provide the committee with a written break down of how that money was spent. can you touch on that, mr. secretary? >> i can -- >> you're a county office folks

worked diligently. they face some challenges throughout. >> there are so many chairs and former chairs of then committee i'm probably going to -- >> exactly. >> congressman, we are using this resource in a planned and strategic way. the $100 million. we didn't use it all at once. we have been basically ramping up as work requirements are required and facilitated. i can't tell you today the exact amount that has been allocated but staff and temporary staff have been hired in offices and that we are in the process of trying to determine where best to locate additional staff based on workloads. we will provide you with a breakdown as you have asked in terms of where the money is spent and what we have purchased with it as soon as this hearing is over. >> i very much appreciate that, secretary. one of the things i and a number of members of this committee promised the folks in the field going through the challenges of implementing this is there's help and we attempted in the

farm bill and normally staff funding issues are handled not by the authorizing committee. >> i would point out that overall u.s. d.a. staff down by 15,000 ftes and fsa is and rural development hit with those reductions. >> absolutely. and just shows how much more effort the folks in the field are shouldering. i have also visited with you and a number of other officials about a slightly different area. the way in which it appears that u.s.d.a. implementing a prime minister of net effect of penalty penalizing growers with cover crops particularly in 14 and 15 crop cycles. the question i keep getting from them is why can't you've have used thedy dyiscretion to be --

>> the concern we have is the way in which the statute or bill crafted in terms of flexibility that we have or don't have. be happy to continue to work with you on this. we are encouraging cover crop production. we have seen a 350% increase in cover crop. we understand the importance of it. i think there may be a concern of whether or not we have the legal authority to do what you're asking us to do. if you have an interesting way for us to get around that, we'd be more than happy to hear it. >> thank you. one last question. i assume probably my colleagues will have some questions about the accuracy program, arcsi. and 2014 farm bill u.s.d.a. instructed to inform the committee reaching substantial completion. the arcsi program and the report to the committee in july indicates that the program's a pilot in place in about 30 counties. illinois and iowa.

that's an interesting substantial completion report. you see the perspective that i offer up. >> well, the reason for this, congressman, is that we learned lessons from the initial imple meation of midas which is that we instituted the whole program or tried to institute the whole program and found that we had seriouses glitches and unintended processes through the computer process and decided to stage implementation to work out the bugs in advance before we create basically havoc and concern on the countryside. the states were chosen in part because folks volunteered. were willing to participate. they were also chosen in part because of the bulk of work that's done in corn and soybean production. no disrespect to the good folks of oklahoma but congressman king has a lot of power in this

committee. >> he has a lot of influence everywhere. mr. secretary, thank you for the efforts of implementing and a few things that need to be done and i'm sure together we'll get it back. >> mr. walz for five minutes? tim? >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. secretary, thank you for being. i want to echo my thoughts to you and your folks on the avian influenza influenza. it came hard, hot, it was big and to try to handle on it. maybe mr. peterson hit on this a little bit. i'm curious. this was really labor intensive. takes a lot of people to do this. and my two-part question is making sure you have the resources moving forward on this and some of the suggestions coming out of the industry is that you have a kind of a first responder team that's ready to drop and spin people up quicker

0 when this comes again and i think unfortunately that will be the case are we ready for it? just those two parts. >> avis employment is down by 8,000 folks and had to hire 3,200 people to supplement the work. 21 states impacted. what we have learned is we need a command and communication structure organized and in place as quickly as possible. a structure that reflects the need for regional communication, a structure that involves state communication and a structure that involves county by county communication. so we are as part of our planning process for the fall we are looking at ways in which we can essentially identify assets and increase the number of incident command teams that would be available to go once this thing hits. we are planning for a circumstance where we're simultaneously having to deal with 500 joutd breaks.

we think that's sort of a worst-case scenario situation and planning for that. we have had a meeting a workshop last week. we have a meeting scheduled in iowa next week. with the industry to continue to listen and to learn. >> great. >> and i think we are, you know, we understand there are issues involving bio security. there are issues involved depopulation. there are issues involving disposal. there are issues involving indemnification. and the time for repopulation. these are all issues we want to learn and try to be in a better position. we also want to make sure that we preposition and have as much work done as possible in terms of disposal sites. we ran into issues on local officials of landfills and could crop up and where it hasn't, i trying to identify landfills. work with local and state officials to get them prepared for this if it occurs to streamline the process and don't have the delay we have

experienced in some other states. >> i'm certainly glad to hear that and please take back to your folks that from the folks in the industry and on the ground and appreciative of your work and to mr. peterson and king who have been leading on making sure we get this right an preparing for the future. question on beginning farming rancher. mr. fortenberry myself and authored that on this side and much of the ideas came from things that you had done, mr. secretary. told us to build for the capacity for the future. the oig came out with things on that and most troubling to me is i have never questioned your commitment to this program. you have made it very clear but the oig said officials didn't understand it was a priority and troubles me in terms of implementation and tracking and how many people getting involved. i believe in this program. i know you you believe in it. where are we moving forward to make sure they get it and you have made it a priority?

>> as a result of that result and the concern of beginning farmers and ramplers did deputy secretary is tasked with putting together a major effort to do better outreach, a a better outreach and communication within and outside of usda. he's done round tables and visits with a variety of interest groups and we're working more collaboratively in a more integrated fashion than we did before and calling upon our land grant universities to help and assist us. a recent example is florida a&m where we basically shut down an ars lab, and a substantial amount of land became available and one of the requirement was for them to use it as a beginning farmer and rancher hub, use the land to basically make it easier for beginning farmers and ranchers. we're working with the defense

department. we noticed there are folks leaving the military interested in potentially get foog farm -- getting into farming. the military didn't allow information about our programs when folks leave they are given information, we're now going to make sure that all of our information is available at each one of the bases and making football presentations to financial -- physical presentations to military personnel so it is a better place than it was six months a year ago. >> thank you. i yield back. >> secretary vilsack a couple of quick things. mr. peterson mentioned issues with regard to the turkey farmers, obviously in georgia we have a tremendous amount of poultry farmers and i guess one of the concerns that is expressed to us is that in most

cases the farmers don't own the chickens and so would there be a product for the growers to take advantage of if the -- >> there isn't an insurance program. that was proposed in the 2014 farm bill but because of budget concerns it was not put in the farm bill. i would strongly urge the congress as it begins the process of considering future farm bills to look for a way in which that issue can be addressed. because you've pointed an in equity in the situation. we've paid out nearly 600,000 checks to livestock producers for a variety of disasters they've experienced and right friday so it feels different for the poultry producers because it is. so there is unfortunately not an insurance program. we're looking at waying in which -- ways to look at this indemnification process through ccc that could potentially be

based on a per square foot basis on those who own the facility but not the chickens. we're looking at a variety of programs but there is not a way today. >> i would appreciate it if you keep us informed. that is a big deal for georgia and the cover crops that the former chairman mentioned. i want to talk a little bit about the natural resources conservation services and the wet lapd identification process if we could. last week they announced a new wet land identification process for the prairie pothole region. can you explain how that is different from the current process? >> part of what we're attempting to do is to have a quicker determination than in the past. we've had some -- a serious issue with backlog of activities particularly in the

dakotas where this is an issue and we're trying to find a process to stream line the process so we can get information to folks quicker and simpler and easier. i can provide more detail to you and your office on that congressman. we'd be glad to do that after this hearing. >> thank you. i guess one of our primary concerns is with the epa and the u.s. and the those rules and you say that coupled with potential changes in the process -- >> this is not connected in relationship to waters of the u.s. this is -- this is basically an understanding that there are a couple of areas in this country that have unique geographic challenges relative to conservation and we want to respond to those challenges appropriately. >> but it is a wetland in the identification process? >> yes. >> can you discuss the role of

the climate change program office the ccpo, how does that interact with the other usda agencies and what are their current activities? >> i hope i understand your question. within usda we have a focus on climate and we have a series of climate hubs that are regionally placed. their responsibility is primarily to assess the vulnerabilities to changing climate and weather ability and provide series of new techniques and strategies for allowing producers in each region of the country to adapt to a mitigating changing climate. they are in the process of issuing those sections. the northwest has completed the assessment assessment. and doing additional out reach to the producers have the latest information. we have a series of technology tools that producers can use to

allow them to better analyze what they need to do. and i think it is designed to allow us to continue to work with producers to reduce greenhouse gases linked to agriculture. there are ways in which we can help producers do that and help the bottom line. and finally, it is a complement to precision agriculture that is taking over production agriculture, each acre of land is different and we want folks to know what to do on each acre relative to inputs. >> thank you for your testimony. and the cover crops issue and the issue for the poultry farmers is important to us and i hope you'll continue to work on that. >> time has expired. mrs. fudge for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you mr. secretary for being here today. mr. secretary, last week this committee heard from 1890 land grant institutions on a number of issues including state matching on extension and

research grants. we heard from a number of them they are not getting the funding for which they are eligible because the states are failing to meet the one to one match requirement. in fact, according to an aplu report from 2010-2012, 61% of 1890 land grant institutions did not receive 100% of the one-on-one matching funds from their respective states for extension and research funding. this lack of state matching funds resulted in a loss of $57 million to 1890s. what actions is usda taking to address this? >> the first thing we're doing congresswoman is trying to make sure people understand precisely what is and isn't the rule relative to matching and what power the usda has in potentially waiving the matching requirement. the 50% match requirement i think that the misunderstanding is that it has to come from the state. it doesn't have to come from the state. it can come from other sources and i think that is part of what

we need to get information out to the 1890s to make sure they understand there are other options relative to the matching requirements and then on case-by-case basis to determine whether or not a waiver is appropriate, which we do from time to time. so i think if people understood there is a multitude of ways in which that match can be reached, then that might aleve some of the concerns and open up some of the additional resources. the only thing we're attempting to do is we asked the 1890s to put together in light of the 125th anniversary of the act creating them what do they see in the future. they came back with a set of recommendations relative to the department of centers which would integrate and allow the 1890s to work collaboratively together. we've been supportive and put resources together to help create the centers so there is good positive activity taking place. >> good. because one of the things that i wanted to say to you is that i have to thank my colleagues mr. davis and just recent my mr.

scott for wanting to work with us on assisting you in making sure that these inequities are flushed out so you will be hearing from us. my second question is about hffi. you know it was authorized as part of the farm bill to build off existing efforts and to allow for communities across the country to improve healthy food access and foster food economies and foster public health. recognizing the uncertainty of appropriates for hcci in fy 16, please give us an update on how you plan to implement it. >> i want to make sure i understand the question. there are two efforts under way in terms of providing access and information for local and regional food systems to meet people in need. one is an ongoing effort under the healthy finance in -- food

insecurity initiative, $100 million and roughly $30 million has been directed to a variety of projects around the country. so that is implemented and it will be over the next couple of years. and the second issue is whether we can provide development for funding of grocery stores and what not. that is less successful in getting appropriation generally from congress but we continue to work with our local and regional foods, our farmer's market and programs to try to provide assistance and help. >> good. because the stores is a big issue in food deserts so i appreciate that. i have no other questions. if there is something else you would like to add, i have about a minute left. you are free to use it. >> well, i would say it is appropriate, the 125th anniversary of the 1890s, to focus on the fact they have

tremendous opportunity. and one of the things we're doing with the 1890s is in collaboration with them is ag business is coming to us expressing concerns about the diversity of the work force so the deputy secretary is working with major businesses to create some kind of job fair or work fair to introduce those businesses to some of the broigt students -- bright students of the 1890s so there is activity to go on to connect folks in the ag business as well. >> thank you, i yield back. >> mr. crawford for five minutes. >> mr. secretary, i appreciate you being here today. i have concerned about the actively engaged rules and know the department released draft rules on the implementation of those provisions in the 2014 farm bill. setting limits on the number of managers allowed per farm, was at your discretion and i have concerns that will be unnecessarily penalized by this. how did you usda arrive at this number of allowed managers and

can you be sure that farms are complex or with legitimate business interests held by many individuals are not negatively impacted. >> congressman, good question. this was designed to respond to the concerns expressed about folks who were not farmers who weren't connected to the land receiving the assistance and benefits. so we tasked the team to take a look at -- and i would point out in crafting the farm bill congress basically ensured we walk down a fairly narrow lane here. roughly 90-90% of the people who farm are not impacted by what we are talking about here. this is limited partnerships it doesn't affect corporations or family farming operations so it is a very limited universe of folks who could potentially be impacted and the universe that created the concern to begin with with folks in manhattan and high-rises getting -- being on a conference call and getting

subsidies. so to task to the team to try to close that loophole. and then recognizing that closing the loophole would be helped by having a bright line. how many people does it actually take. and how do you determine? so you start with the proposition there ought to be one manager but you recognize in the south there are operations large in size that require more than one person so we created an option for the large operations to be able to make the case for additional managers up to two additional managers and created some framework and some bright lines that will allow people to understand precisely how they could fall and how they couldn't qualify for those additional managers. so there is a default of one manager, one set of subsidies, but if you can prove that you have a complex and significantly large operation you can basically go to two or three

additional -- one or two additional managers for a total of three. but again, it impacts a very very narrow framework, it does not impact family farming operations or corporations because of the law. >> okay. i appreciate the bright line. i think that would be very helpful if that bright line were as bright as possible to help lay any kind of any concerns that particularly as you mentioned in the southern region where we have economies to scale to a large degree. you mentioned in your testimony that midas is being used to manage records for 11 million fsa customers and can you tell us if others have access to the records for the work they are doing for producers? >> we are working with the nrcs and the quick answer to your question is yes. but it actually works the other way in which fsa is working with the nrcs to utilize the gateway

that nrcs has developed to allow for the producer to access records and look at contracts, to look at payment history et cetera, from their home as opposed to going to an office which was the case before. we obviously want to piggy back the fsa aspect to provide that same kind of flexibility in the future so we'll be using and trying to figure out how to merge the efforts so we provide greater convenience to customers and producers. >> i want to jump into the acrsi accuracy acreage crop reporter and streamline initiative and it listed a number of key outstanding efforts that haven't been completed yet and i understand they are complex systems with large amounts of data but what can you tell us on how those integrating systems

across fsa is being addressed and what is the time line for completion. >> the next big step in the process is this summer where we'll be basically taking a look at whether or not -- which contractor or provider can provide us the best opportunity to take the next step based on the pilots that have been taking place in illinois and iowa which have been extended. we're learning lessons and we're going to be determining how to best interest grate this system -- integrate this system on top of midas investment so this summer we'll be making that determination review and from that point on we'll begin to ramp up the number of people involved in the system to eventually get to a nationwide effort. i would like to be able to tell you a specific date. the problem is i don't know what problems are going to crop up in that ramp up process and i think this is a much better way to do it in the past so it may take longner the front end but have

less convenience in the back end. we're going to work on this in a thoughtful and systematic way which is making progress as we go along. we're not delaying this, we want to do it right. >> thank you mr. secretary. >> time has expired. miss kirkpatrick for five minutes. >> nice to see you mr. secretary, thank you. i'm going to ask you about two projects in my district that you are involved in that are important to the economic development. the first is forefrye. campbell global has left the project and i would like to know what effect that has had on the frothect of four fry and why does the progress stand today? >> well, the record of decision for the forest service was signed in april of this year. this decision covered a million acres and including 430,000

acres of mechanically treated and prescribed burn area. the steward contract was issued. it is a good earth power. they have 19 task forders covering 32,000 acres and 4200 acres has been harvested. the chief visited the for fry area and understands it is a priority for you and it is a priority for us because it is essentially the way of the future and we have been using for fry as an example of better collaboration in other parts of the country to get folks to understand how to stream line this process. we're going to continue to work with diverse interest groups to make sure this is implemented -- >> is there a plan b. in case planet earth can't fulfill the task orders. in other words will other contracts be let what needs to be cleared?

>> there are other forests within for fri being prepared. let me check on what plan b. is. i don't know what plan b. is because we are hopeful that plan a. works but if it doesn't we'll look for additional contractors interested and able to do the work. this is part of the challenge they want more timber harvested and this administration has harvested more timber and we continue to ramp up the number of board feet we are treating but it requires resources and i don't want to get into fire suppression but that is a problem in terms of budgeting. >> i appreciate your interest in the project. you came out to arizona and looked at our forests and it is a model for a collaborate effort in bringing back the timber industry. my second question is about the apache railroad. it is a critical asset for navajo county in snowflake, in my district the road provides good jobs and it is important to

my pork producers, the tim per and pot ash mining. can you tell me what the status is of the little colorado water conservation district application for a community facilities loan for the purchase of the apache railroad? >> what i can tell you congresswoman is we need your help. we need your help to encourage folks to complete the application and to provide us a full and complete application. what was submitted was incomplete. we've notified them of that fact and we're waiting a response to our request for additional information. >> okay. >> so anything you can do to help us get that additional information. >> we'll do that. time is of the essence and it is an important project and we'll certainly work with your office. thank you mr. chairman. i yield back. >> yields back. mr. desjarlais for five minutes. >> secretary i know no trip to the ag committee will be complete without a discussion of

live black vultures. we continue to have problems in tennessee and charlie horde brought this to our attention from a tennessee cattleman and i think we talked about this now two or three times. there is a provision in the farm bill livestock indemnity program where producers are eligible for compensation for losses against protected species like vultures but what has been happening is that after they have the losses, the farm service agencies are telling farmers they need someone from federal agencies to come out and verify the losses. however avis is telling farmers that they are not able to go verify the losses so there appears to be a miscommunication and i wanted to make you aware that we're still having problems with that. do you know of any action taken to address that. >> congress, the honest answer is i don't but it seems that you asking the question will prompt me to go back to the office and figure out if there is a third

way to get this done. i understand avis is strapped and that may be the reason. but that is not a particular good reason for your producer so let me see what we can do. >> one suggestion has been made the state extension services be able to do that or veterinarians ser the losses is that something we could entertain. >> that is a good point. and it is something we try to impress upon our folks at usda, that if you can't get the job done for whatever good reason, good valid reason exists then the next best thing is to figure out a way in which somebody else could do it and we obviously haven't done as good of a job in this particular circumstance as we could. we'll work on it. >> and touch one other thing and farmers and ranchers have voiced concerns about submitting the application and it takes too long to deal with the problem. the only method for submitting a application which is via the

mail, snail mail and some of the claims processes take four to six weeks and cattle season is over and maybe we could look at a more efficient permitting process, perhaps something online and perhaps something more than a year. >> we have a process improvement effort at usda where i have tasked every missionary to identify two process improvement projects they work on to reduce time to convenience to producers and we have success and saved over 100,000 hours but this sounds like a good idea to suggest this could be a process initiative. >> and my office is willing to do the leg work. if you could have someone follow up with our office on this issue we would be happy to work with you and get it resolved and thank you for indulging me for the third time on this issue. >> i apologize you had to bring it up a third time. >> i yield back. >> miss graham for five minutes. >> thank you.

thank you mr. secretary, it is good to see you. appreciate you being in my district for florida a&m's commencement last may. wonderfully received and much appreciated appreciated. while you were there you had an opportunity to go to gas den county and you met with farmers and local area leaders. during that time there, you spoke about the ways that the department of agriculture can assist in low-income high-poverty rural communities and mentioned the 1890s ag business partnerships and i'm curious if that is what you were referring to during that time or if you could elaborate on that. >> congresswoman appreciate the question. it is part but not by any means all we are trying to do. and with your permission and the chair's permission i'm going to elaborate on this just a bit. when i came into office the first suggestion made to me was

there were literally tens of thousands of claims against discrimination in the past and there was an effort to make sure that didn't reoccur. and one of the things that we noticed is we weren't getting information, we weren't getting programs instituted in high poverty areas and part of the reason for that is sometimes the areas don't have the sophistication and the technical assistance to allow them to compete successfully for a competitive grant programs so that was the genesis for putting strike force together. there were issues concerning the implementation early in the beginning of strike force but we have essentially significantly changed that program so now it is an integrated effort between the programs going down into a county area like the one you mentioned and asking the questions, what can we do, what do you need and trying to figure out collaboratively in a way to make sure that it happens. to date, we're now in 21 states.

over 800 counties -- 880 counties i believe. we have 1,000 local partners looking to drive the effort and as a result we've invested $16 billion in 129,000 different projects. it could be a home loan a business loan a conservation project, a nutrition effort. what we were talking about there was to figure out ways to use the agricultural base in a more creative and value added way in that country as part of an effort to address child poverty because you can't do that unless you have decent jobs and unless you use your natural resources in the most effective way and we are trying to figure out how to do that and we have a great partner in florida a&m. we have given them a substantial amount of land that could be used in a beginning farmer effort and in crop production that could occur with a wal-mart, with -- and frankly that is what happened in georgia. we have 80 african-american

farmers selling collared greens to wal-mart that has developed a successful co-op. that is what we would like to do more of but it takes time and commitment and focused effort. >> well, i think you'll find the people in gas den county are ready to work hand in hand with you anything you can do and my team can do to help in the partnership, we stand ready to do. >> and we've taken the additional step of asking other federal agencies to work with us and that is why the president developed the child poverty initiative that -- in which we'll be looking at a variety of factors involving child poverty and we'll be selecting 20 areas within the country to sort of focus on a two zwreneration -- generation approach for child pofrry, not just programs for kids or mom and dad but for the family and in collaboratively

and concert and we think there is an opportunity there to make a dent in the child poverty rate in rural areas which is unfortunately too, too high. >> well thank you very much and again look forward to working hand in hand with department of agriculture in this project and thank you for your commitment to helping work on child poverty. it is certainly a significant issue not only in gas den county but across our country. i appreciate that and i yield back the bbs of my time. >> mr. yo-ho for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. mr. sillvilsack, good to see you again. i want to go back to the midas issue. it was initiated under president bush and in 2009 when this came together. when it was bid out, was that a competitive bid on that i.t. program? >> i don't want to mislead you. i'm not sure. i would be surprised if that weren't a competitive bid but i

can check on that. >> i looked at that because when i looked at the strike force, the language in here says that it looked like those were given out without a competitive give and that raised the question on midas. and then when i read through this, it just talks about the inefficiency in the over sight of the fsa office watching this and it said fsa has obligated over $444 million on the project as of 2015 but has not modernized the farm programs and you only have two applications. and is that program worth continuing or is that program ended to not put good money on top of bad and go to something else? >> well what we did -- first of all, i won't suggest this was done in an effective way because obviously it wasn't. but i think it started off with a grand vision and a implementation plan that didn't understand and appreciate how

difficult it was going to be to overlay all of this on top of a 1980 system. there was this disconnect between the folks in kansas city who do our i.t. stuff and the folks in d.c. who do our i.t. stuff. they weren't communicating effectively and we didn't have enough oversight. all of that has been changed. >> for the future, i hope it is. because if it was a 1980 system they started with and it was 2009 when things were starting to be implemented, you would have thought they would have projected ahead on the new technology that will come out. >> that -- that relates to the fact that there are 2100 offices and people in those offices that are pretty comfortable with one system. and none of that was really particularly well thought out. so what i did, once i became fully aware of the problems i said we're going to stop midas we're going to start looking at

this thing incrementally and so we did the first effort to make sure that folks could access their records no matter where they are and that is a big opportunity and savings of staff and that is implemented. and then the business integrity to reduce the errors and now we're working on the questions drk working to allow producers to work from homes. that proprocess is in play and hopefully over the course of the next months or so we'll see progress on that. so there is work being done. so i don't think we want to say we should stop the program. we want to make it more convenient. >> it said it only has a life span of 2021 and i have two other questions so i'm going to move on. the fsa continues to pay the contractor as of app 2015, $215 million in taxpayer dollars were obligated and fsa paid the

contractor over $108 million. isn't there a way to stop that. if you have a inefficient contractor one that is inept, can you stop a program in the future and i have something i have to ask you about citrus? >> the answer is yes and that is why we are looking at a more intensive process to determine whether or not contractors have worked on this in the past should continue or whether we should bring new people in and of course that has caused some interesting concern. >> well i would like to work with you on that. and then just talking about the citrus in florida, as you know, the citrus greening and i appreciate the help you've given us. in florida we had a high of over 300 million boxes of oranges that accounted for $4.5 billion in revenue and we've seen that drop steadily and rapidly due specifically to citrus greening. is there anything being held up in that program or that needs to be ex peddited so we just talked

with the ag commissioner yesterday and in florida we've gone from 300 million boxes then down to 200 and this year's crop looks like under 100 million boxes and it is at a point where it won't sustain the infrastructure for that whole industry and you're looking at millions of jobs that will be lost. what is your comments in 14 seconds? >> well, the challenge obviously is to find a solution. an that is why it was important to put research money behind that solution. and that is exactly what the congress did in the farm bill in providing additional resources directed to citrus green research and that is what we're doing to get the money out the door as quickly as possible and in the hands of the folks do the research. there is promising research on vectors and promising research on heat therapy and promising research on fos forrous utilization that over the long haul could solve this but that is where the focus is on

containing it to the extent we can and figure out through research how to solve it. >> i appreciate your efforts and mr. chairman thank you for letting him go over. >> yielding back. mr. scott, five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. welcome, mr. secretary. first of all mr. secretary it was great being with you in georgia back in it march when you came. and we had a wonderful time. mr. secretary, my state of georgia produces more poultry than any other state in the united states. on an average day the georgia poelt ty industry produces 29 million pounds of chicken, 6.3 million pounds of eggs and 5.5 million pounds of hatching age. and so you can see we have a very profound economic and

business agriculture impact with our poultry. and i wanted to ask you with the migratory season coming and birds coming south, can you tell us exactly what your department is doing to help thwart this avian bird flu and getting down into the south? >> congressman, we're taking a number of steps. let me start with something that congressman peterson has been involved in and helpful with and that is the development of a vaccine that could potentially be of assistance. we're making progress. we have a seed strain that appears to be successful with reference to chickens. it is in the prot he is of being tested for turkey. once those tests are completed it will go to the company that basically is capable of producing the vaccine.

and they in turn will work with other companies working on vaccines to begin the process of developing it commercially. we have requested resources to allow for stockpiling which i know congressman peterson is interested in us doing so that is first and foremost one thing we're doing to try to focus. the second thing we're able to do if we can obtain a vaccine 100% effective we want to work with our trading partners so we doesn't discourage trade in targeted ways. >> let me ask you. what is being done specifically to help the growers? >> the vaccine is -- one thing is vaccine. the second thing is bio security operations to tighten up operations to reduce the risk of this occurring. there is not a lot of what you can do in terms of changing the flight of birds in terms of migratory patterns. >> let me ask you mr. secretary,

what about funding. what about helping with funding on this. there are certain funds that the a.p.h.i.s. is responsible for. i want to know are any of these funds going to help the growers on the ground? >> yes. we have already committed well over $500 million for assistance to growers in two primary categories. one indemnifying for loss and in two in helping to pay for the reasonable expenses for clean-up and disinfection. we are also working closely with the industry to try to create a tight bio security set of protocols as soon as possible so we can do the best job to mitigate the spread of this if it occurs again. >> so you are saying there are funds that can be directed to help the growers on the ground. >> and they actually have been -- they have gotten resources out to farmers.

>> all right. the other thing is i want to complement you working with my alma mater, florida a&m university, for that tremendous tremendous -- that land in florida, i think will be the largest acquirement of land to help beginning farmers for any of the colleagues and i just want to thank you for that. and while i'm on the subject of the 1890s mr. secretary, your -- your assistant sect for civil rights mr. joe leonard joined with many of us in the concern for getting more african-american students going into the business of agriculture and agriculture business. and we are very, very much on board with that. i want you to also tell him how much we appreciate him providing

that leadership to -- to help us get funds to be able to help these students to be able to go into careers in agra business. and one of the things we hope we're able to do is tweak language in the farm bill that will allow these 1890s to be able to add the area of student scholarships and loan forgiveness, much as we did for our veterinarians, as you remember, we sponsored legislation, got that passed we saw a shortage of veterinarians and we did and helped them with loan forgiveness and so i wanted to make you aware of that and ask for your support and help as we move forward on that initiative to help the african-american students as well. thank you, sir. >> mr. chairman five seconds. just congressman there are 550

scholars currently working at usda from these 1890 universities that are getting scholarship help and assistance and the commitment of a job at usda so we're going to continue to work to make sure that bright young people have opportunities at usda as well as agra business. >> time is expired mr. kelly for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman and thank you mr. secretary for being here. first, just going back to the midas, i thank you first for your vigilance once you found out there was something going wrong and the money was being appropriated and for jumping on that and taking immediate action but to me as a former prosecutor there is no greater crime than the violation of the public trust and just basically corruption and so i thank you but i'm very disappointed that our justice system did not civilly or criminally punish someone for abusing that much of the public's money.

what policies and procedures have you taken now to ensure we don't take as long to discover flawed and a -- fraud and abuse by your department? have you done anything and what steps have you done to make sure that we get to that a little quicker? >> well one thing we've done with reference to the strike force and oao is to look at the recommendations that oig has recommended and we're following through on each recommendation. we have a different system for competitive review and competitive grants in terms of the 2501 grants that were concern. there are two sets of eyes. a panel not connected to usda that reviews the applications and a second panel that reviews the mathematical computations for determination of competitive ps and that process is much better than it was. in terms of midas, we have changed the way in which we deal

with i.t. one of the problems we confronted when i became secretary is that each missionary of usda it its own cio operating relativelyin deposit of each other. and now everybody is working in a collaborate and integrated way so the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. and we've created an e-board that reviews projects and required updates and is willing and able to ask the difficult questions. we have solved the issue of the different vision between kansas city and d.c. and put a project manager in charge of each of the major projects so i know there is someone personally responsible for over sight and those people are meeting with me on a regular basis. i have monthly meetings on midas, i have monthly meetings on arc and i will continue to have those meetings and monthly

meetings on blue print which is designed to create savings within and more efficient government. so there is a lot going on in that space that didn't go on in 2009 and 2010. >> thank you, mr. secretary. on the supplemental nutrition assistance program, how is -- how are you working with states to ensure or to bolster our anti-fraud efforts? because i understand both you and the states have a process to work and so how are we working with states to bolster that process? >> two different responses to that congressman. first of all, the fraud rate snap is over 1%. it is historically at low rates. significantly lower than it was five years ago, ten years ago, 15 years ago. two reasons. one, we are working more collaboratively with states and providing states with better training and data mining information and there are 7 million transactions in snap aday and we're using computer

technology to identify future problems. we saw problems with lost cards. people coming in every move saying i lost my card and we had a pilot in north carolina that was successful advising folks when they've had multiple cards lost this is a problem and you may be violating the law and we've seen a decrease in the number -- we did 700,000 investigates and interviews on a personal basis and 40,000 people were disqualified from snap as a result of those investigations and constantly looking at the 260 businesses that are snap eligible and about 1400 of those were basically stopped from doing business because they were involved in activities that they shouldn't be involved in. so there is an ongoing effort. we obviously still have work to do. we have teams in place, additional staff dedicated to this and we'll continue to work on it but when you are dealing with as many transactions and as many people, there are still work to be done.

>> thank you, mr. secretary. mr. chairman, i yield back the balance of my time. >> gentleman yields back. mr. gresham for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman. i share the sentiments of my colleagues. it is nice to have you mr. secretary. and thank you also for participating in program review and program support and visiting my home state of new mexico. i appreciate that you spend time with my colleagues kelly and yo ho on figuring out where is the balance. you don't want to throw out a program. the programs and strike force and beginning ranchers and farmers these are the kind of initiatives in a state like new mexico that are incredibly meaningful if they are implemented correctly and we don't have waste or abuse in the programs but are critical. we have the average age of our

farmers now is 60 and over. by -- and i appreciate that you've had another internal review looking at discriminatory practices and looking at making sure that you move the department forward and being clear about your relationship with the communities and i'm grateful for that. i think there is a lot of work to be done in programs. so looking at being forward-thinking and proactive so it is not a hotline tip that we are thinking about maybe random reviews of certain programs an even in doing that so it is not particularly focused on waste and abuse because the intent isn't to try to find programs that don't work, although we want that information, we want accountability and staff to be held accountable every time there is a purposeful or there is conduct that creates accountable issues in taxpayer-funded programs but in digs and as important is making sure that these programs work in the way that they are designed to and if they are not, to

readdress that so they can because those initiatives both coming from the department as i identified strategies and methods to make a difference for future farmers and growing food for this country and responding to ideas that come from the constituents directly in this committee. is there anything that we missed in this dialogue that helps you have a relationship with this committee but everyone to address the accountability so we are holding folks accountable, including in the private sector and think being the claw backs an making sure they are not involved in the mismanagement of the programs and doing everything we can to highlight that usda is leading the federal example for best practices and making these programs work for their intentded beneficiaries. >> a couple of things. i think we're in a much different place than in 2008 when oao was created. we have a receipt for service,

so people can prove they went into an office and if they didn't get hope they don't have a problem in the past of saying well we don't remember him coming in, well he has a receipt for service or request for service. we put minority members on county boards and committees which i think has helped and we've seen the election of the minority members occur after their selection so that is a good thing. the strike force, i think is in a much better place and much more effective. i would say the one thing that you could potentially look at is something that the chairman raised and in his question or my answer, and that is at what level will you require before action can be taken. in other words, is that standard of a criminal judgment and a civil judgment, is that the proper standard or proper bar that has to be crossed before you can take action. i don't know. i think that is something that you all may want to talk about. it may be that is a bright

enough line that makes it easy for people to know when and when not to hold people accountable but it makes it pretty hard right, to -- other than removing somebody from office or asking them to leave the department it makes them -- it a little difficult if that is the bar. so that is maybe something you want to look at. >> mr. secretary, i appreciate that. and we've had these conversations about some of the differences between federal employment and federal contracting systems and other government systems, local level and state. and i inherited an agency in the '90 that is couldn't account for $1 million which at the time was 10% of the total budget and we dismissed almost half of the work force and it was difficult and in a civil service environment but it was warranted. and it -- you need to have the flexibility to have a hardline

when you need a hardline and the opportunity to retool and redirect and retain employees working hard when a program is not flexible enough to meet the constituent so i applaud the chairman and look forward to more conversations of that nature to get it right. >> gentle lady yields back. mr. davis for five minutes. >> hi, mr. secretary. first off, i want to thank you again for coming in here. you've always been open and sometimes brutally honest with your answers. i appreciate your participation in this oversight hearing today. it has been great to work with you and many of your staff at the usda on a wide variety of issues where we don't agree on every single issue. one thing i found out about you personally and the usda is that you are willing to listen to all sides. so thank you for that. and you know it wouldn't be a hearing without me bringing up the school nutrition program. i do actually want to thank you.

i want to thank the department for actually bringing about some flexibility. i think we can do a little bit more. i look forward to working with you on that. again, would you like to invite you to come out to one of our schools and talk to some of the folks on the ground in illinois about the program. your folks have done that. they've done a great job. and i know we're working together to make it even better. but before i get into the over sight question i do want to bring up one issue not related to school nutrition but the summer meal program. i visit as many sights as i can and we have a concern with the lack of participation because of transportation issues both in rural areas that i serve and the smaller urban areas that i serve and other urban areas that i don't serve and can you give me ideas to increase participation in the summer meals program that you and i can work together to make it happen. >> well i appreciate your

acknowledgment of working with the school lunch program. two things. one, the ept program is in a pilot, we believe it does effectively deal with the issue of transportation in remote areas because it provides an alternative to a concrete specific site that a youngster has to go to. it gives that family a little more flexibility to get the food to provide summer meals. so an extension of that program might be in order. the second thing would be for drk to work with us and direct us to be a bit more flexible in terms of the physical sight. right now we are -- we have a fairly narrow view of where the kids need to congregate and i have been encouraging our team with create ways to be more flexible instead of forcing kids to come to us we find out where the kids are and provide mobile

opportunities and some of that has happened but more could be done. >> and anything i can do to be helpful to offer suggestions based on my visits in my district i'm happy to help and i appreciate your willingness to do so sir. i do want to ask you one quick over sight question. my colleague, mr. yo hoe alluded to i.t. issues in the past and i want to know what has the usda done to -- what steps have you taken to implement some i.t. solutions to correct the problems discussed here today and what have you learned maybe in best practices from the private sector and is there anything issues that you see on the horizon that we might be able to assist with? >> well, when i came into this department, i asked to send an e-mail to the employees to introduce myself. and i was told that i couldn't do that. and i thought, well now that can't be clearly i could send

an e-mail to an employee. you can send a single employee but you have to do 17 separate e-mails. and they said they have 17 different separate e-mail systems. we can go into a long detailed conversations about how many problems there are that with model but we spent a considerable period of time where we now have a single e-mail system which obviously provides greater security and allows us to save money at the same time. so we've learned from the private sector an effort to source our technology. again, i mentioned the fact we had silos individual cios and they were off buying different systems and hardware and software that weren't compatible. we now have a strategic sources initiative where before you do something, you better find out who else in your missionary is doing the same thing and maybe you can purchase in bulk. and by the way before you do

that, how about checking with other missionaries to determine whether or not they are buying the same thing at the same time in which case you could save substantial money so there is a focus on that and a focus on consistency and we've spent a good deal of time recently obviously in terms of cyber issues reviewing the systems identifying and creating authentication systems that are much, much tighter than they were six months ago. >> thank you. my time has expired. >> yielding back. miss plaskett for five minutes. >> thank you mr. chairman mr. ranking member for this hearing. i think it is very timely and much needed and i appreciate so much the secretary's having not just being forthcoming but having a really depth of information that he's able to provide the committee with. mr. secretary there has been quite a bit of discussion about the office of advocacy and outreach who created in part to avoid the wholesalin tire

classes of rural development not being able to receive services. but i wanted to know if you could speak a little bit about and if you have information as to the penetration of minority farmers in the growth of agricultural exports. i know that under your leadership, the agency has really grown tremendously the amount of exports that our farmers have been able to be a part of in being able to send their goods off outside of the united states. and i didn't know if there had been any data correlated, compiled or any information that lets us know how much of that is really being able to go to businesses that are owned by minorities and minority farmers. >> as you were asking the question, congresswoman, it occurred to me that most of the activity and the progress that we've made with minority producers recently has been in the local and regional market. in other words within the u.s. creating co-ops and doing

business with local restaurants and local grocery stores and so forth. you ask a very interesting question and i don't have the answer specifically. we do have a breakdown of the number of small businesses that we do business with the minority owned businesses that we generally do business with at usda, but i don't know that we necessarily have a breakdown of how frequently african-american producers for example would benefit from an export. i would say my guess is there is not a great deal for the following reasons. one, most of the exports are bulk, a substantial of them are in bulk commodities which play to small scale agriculture. and if there is an opportunity it is in the organic space with the equivalency greemtss we've been able to negotiate with europe, japan, korea mexico canada, there is now a new

opportunity for potentially exports that might be easier to participate in and a little bit easier. we have been working with the commerce department to try to create a streamline process for companies to export. there are so few companies in this country that actually export, it is less than 5% of the over all companies and most of them only export to one country and we are trying to find ways to get businesses into the export game for effectively. so i'm happy to go back to the team to ask specifically your question but my sense is probably you're not going to -- >> i know in the virgin islands the issue of organic and the fancy foods is an area that our farmers would be most interested in, the types of products that we would produce that would be outside of our local markets would be in the fancy foods, the tam erins, the gufa and the mango and that type of products but the one thing that you

mentioned that was important in our area is when you talk about local and regional marketing and local and regional produce because i find that one other thing that i hear quite frequently from the local farmers is not having the resources to assist them with processing, having cooperatives but not being able to do the value added to those products. what resources have you seen being sent out to those areas in that respect? >> two programs come to mind. maybe three programs come to mind. the value added producer grant program, the local and regional food promotion program and to a certain extent the block grant program which is administered through the states and territories are where you can get resources. i'll have a team get in touch with you and encourage to do what a number of folks have done come down to usda and put

together a half day presentation of all of the programs and you'll be surprised at how many opportunities there are and we'd be happy to do that. >> and would you be remiss not to mention that we would very much appreciate you and your staff and others coming down to the territory. one of the things that you talked about is something that's very dear to us, which is your child poverty initiative. presently, there are about 31% of the children in the virgin islands live in poverty. so we're very interested in farmers as well as our local government on how do we have our farmers the be able to participate in feeding those children through the school lunch program, as my college discussed and other areas to be able to serve those children. >> thank you. >> time is sxiefd. >> thank you so much mr. chairman. >> mr. allen, five minutes.

>> well this is -- i just came from a mark up so my mind is not all there. mr. secretary, thank you for being here this morning. you had a lot going on here today. just wanteded to ask a couple of questions on the pilot program. usda officials awarded the block agreement to noncompetitively and they awarded them to unqualified community organizations hand picked by political appointee pearly s. reed. some of these community organizations were created just months before the award was made. these organizations allowed approximately $300,000 to be wasted. the oie recommended recovering that. can you tell me what the status of that recommendation is? >> yes. $233,000 has been recovered. we're currently in the process of establishing proof to the --

there's an issue involving $67,000 is already owed. we're in the process of trying to convince them that they have -- they still owe us $67,000. the 233,000 has been recovered. >> i was in the district and our folks are worried about the avian flu. of course, we vrnt had that problem down south yet in georgia. but they are concerned with the migration of wild birds to the south over the winter. anything we doing to try to stop that? >> well, i think there are two things that can be done. one is to develop a vaccine and make sure that we are able to develop an effective vaccine, that our trading partners don't

hold it against us for using it. that's still an open question and we've been working with a number of countries today to get them to do this on a -- to ban regionally as opposed to the intooir country. two, working with the industry to work on bioinitiatives and steps that could potentially be taken to mitigate the risk of spread of this. three, i suppose this is to continue to focus on the most efficient way of dealing with it. if it doesn't hit in terms of disposal, in terms of depopulation so that we minimize the risk that can occur if we don't do that in a timely a. >> where are we with the development of the vaccine? >> there's a seed strain that's been developed that's 100% effective on chickens. it's being tested on turkeys. cross your fingers and hope it is available to them.

they in turn will begin the process of manufacturing and working with other vaccine companies that would want to purchase the license to be able to produce it. we have asked omb for additional resources to make sure -- i think it's omb right? omb to make sure that we have a sufficient resource to begin stockpiling that vaccine. we're also working with, as i said earlier our foreign friends, we had a meeting in baltimore where over 30 countries came with representatives to talk to them about the appropriate way of banning boultry if we have this, that it's not fair to your poultry producers because there's an incident in oregon or iowa the ban production from you and so we're continuing to work on that, as well. the last thing we're trying to do is to convince congress that -- this is a long-term issue. i'm pretty sure this isn't the only time we're going to have to dole with something like this is

to see if we could complete the funding for the poultry lab improvements that i think are absolutely necessary in modernization of that lab. >> that would be good. would this virus be available fairley soon or what's the timetable? >> well, you know i would hope it would be but i don't want to speak for the company in terms of how quickly they can turn it around. but, you know i'm pretty impressed with the fact that in a relatively short period of time we've come a long way. the previous fires was 60% effective, which means if you treated 100 birds 60 wook okay, but 40 wouldn't. that's not enough. you have to get it to 100% or close to it for it to be effective. >> i'm about out of time, so i won't get to question but i still am hearing a real problem as far as legal services and suing our eventual ability growers and costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars on frivolous lawsuits. so, you know that needs to be addressed. and we need to come up with a solution and i yooet yield back

the remainder of my time. thank you. >> the chair now recognizes himself for five minutes. >> mr. secretary earlier when you were answering the questions about the cios, you indicated that there were stove pipe cios and the various agencies in your department. as i understand it you've hired a chief cio now to oversee those agents? >> there's always been a chief cio, but that chief cio wasn't empowered, if you will, to have sufficient oversight and sufficient responsibility, in my view, to basically be able to know and to be able to channel all other cios from each missionary in the proper direction. >> so do they now have to report to that one individual? >> yes. and there's a process i think on a directive that i signed some time ago that said, listen you're all in this together, you're not going to be operating separately and distinctly from

each other. >> i'm glad to hear that. we had the exact same thing in the department of homeland security. and it's a real mess. if you don't empower one individual to have direct authority over those individuals because they want to do their own thing. >> and they do and that creates a lot of problems. >> glad to hear it. many people, including myself, that the epa's water of the i'd rule is expanding the epa aegz jurisdiction beyond what they statutorily authorize. if the epa determines there is a jurisdictional water in a producer's field but natural resources conservation service is not identified it as a wetland, how will that work? how do you reconcile that? >> the correct answer is i don't know and the hope would be that that doesn't occur. i think there's still an awful lot of work to be done in terms of this issue. i don't think we've resolved it.

i think there's going to be a lot of litigation and concern about this. my focus is -- we're in the business of trying to help farmers determine whatever it is they could do. that's why we're trying to figure out what we can do to be better at ncis more efficient more timely to be able to use resources more effectively. that is our focus. >> what if usda identifies wetlands that the corps and epa have not identified? what will that mean for the farmers and ranchers? will these wetlands be clean water access wetlands? >> i don't know the answer to that question. those are technical questions

and, frankly i just don't know the answer. >> i fear they're going to end up in litigation and that's so unfair to our farmers and ranchers. >> i think that's a pretty safe bet today. >> thank you. the chair now recognizes the gentle lady whose name i can't see from here. miss custer. sorry. you have five memberships. >> thank you very much. i wanted to say first off thank you very much. i'm very excited in new hampshire that we have growth in farming. i think one of the few states 5% increase in new farmers. a lot of emphasis on farm to table and buying local and farmers markets really taking off in our region.

i wanted to talk to you about the prach r program beginning farmers and ranchers and an inspector general's report issued in may of 2015 about the generation of farmers that are retiring from the industry and how we can encourage -- and i don't want to say young people, because sometimes it's young people and sometimes it's not the young people. it may be people seeking a second career. despite considerable resources provided by usda agencies the department lacks sufficient performance goals, direction coordination and monitoring to ensure success that fund were being used effectively by farmers. and i just wanted to see if you could comment on that. how can we implement effective performance rules to ensure that