The Agriculture Department would see a 21 percent cut in discretionary spending under President Trump’s budget proposal, including elimination of the McGovern-Dole programs that provide food for schoolchildren in poor countries and a grant and loan program for water and sewer projects in rural communities.
The package also would cut USDA data-gathering agencies and reduce staffing through a streamlining of USDA’s county offices and “encourage private-sector conservation planning,” according to a two-page summary.
In an introduction to the proposal, which covers a quarter of federal spending, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said it “eliminates and reduces hundreds of programs and focuses funding to redefine the proper role of the federal government.” The administration says it will have a package in May that covers mandatory programs, such as farm subsidies and food stamps, and tax reform.
Discretionary spending – the subject of the White House proposal today – is 16 percent of USDA spending and includes the Women, Infants and Children food program, rural development, food safety, the Forest Service, research and land stewardship. The White House said it will fully fund WIC and USDA’s meat inspection agency. It allotted $2.4 billion for forest fires, the 10-year average. The Obama administration wanted to boost funding for wildfires.
The McGovern-Dole program would be eliminated, said the White House, because it “lacks evidence that is being effectively implemented to reduce food insecurity.” The Obama administration requested $182 million for the program this fiscal year, enough to provide food to 3.4 million people. “Its purpose is to reduce the incidence of hunger and malnutrition and improve literacy and primary education,” said the Obama budget request. The Trump administration is cutting foreign aid of all types.
Elimination of “the duplicative Water and Wastewater loan and grant program” would save $498 million, said the White House. “Rural communities can be served by private sector financing or other federal investments in rural water infrastructure, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s state revolving funds.”
Also to be eliminated are “duplicative and under-performing” discretionary programs of the Rural Business and Cooperative Service, for a savings of $95 million.
The budget “reduces staffing in USDA’s Service Center Agencies to streamline county office operation, reflect reduced Rural Development workload and encourage private-sector conservation planning” and “reduces funding for USDA’s statistical capabilities while maintaining core departmental analytical functions, such as the funding necessary to complete the Census of Agriculture.” No estimates of savings were listed by the White House.
Some $350 million will go to USDA’s “flagship competitive research program,” said the budget proposal, which would focus work by Agricultural Research Service scientists “to the highest-priority agriculture and food issues, such as increasing farming productivity, sustaining natural resources, including those within rural communities, and addressing food safety and nutrition priorities.”
A USDA spokesman said the department did not plan to release supplemental material to the White House proposal.