Listing of Senate and House AG and Appropriations Committeess

Consultation form

NASCOE Position Papers

Midwest Area Legislative Report

2005 Legislative Conference Report

Tom Oasen, Jon Williams, Deb Esselman, and Kathy Morton went to the “Hill” on March 1^st for WASCOE/NASCOE during this years full NASCOE Legislative Conference.

Our first day was the planning session.  The NASCOE Officers greeted us and thanked us for making the trip to WDC.  Mark VanHoose the National Legislative Chairperson kicked things off.  Mark stressed that times are tough for everyone. Money is tight, and the hope for additional full time or temporary staff is going to be hard to get to help us with the CDP, Graze Out Program, TAP, Tobacco Buy-Out Program and the rest of our Farm Bill annual/contractual programs.

One thing that Mark told us is that we need to ask Congress for a Base Line ceiling for County Office (CO) employees.  The current FSA workload shows 11,017 CO employees are needed to deliver our permanent programs.  We are operating with just under 9,300 permanent positions and limited temporary staffing (temp staffing is slated to be cut by another 250 employees in FY 2006!).  NASCOE and the Legislative Committees are going to request that Congress set a permanent Base Line of 9,500 permanent CO employees.  NASCOE fells that this would help Congress better balance the budget knowing exactly what funds are needed for CO employees, rather than having to approve spending for FSA in a lump sum every year.  This would also help Congress to rest assured that the CO employees will be able to deliver the USDA programs to America’s Farmers and Ranchers, in our traditional “can-do” style!

Mark also said that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) likes the FSA GIS/GPS and CLU mapping progress.

NASCOE is still waiting for a decision from the Department to allow NASCOE members who want to contribute to the PAC to have automatic deductions taken from their pay.

Paul Jackson (National Wheat Growers) and Terry Detrick (Oklahoma Farmers Union), both from Oklahoma spoke to the group. Both agree and support NASCOE that FSA should be involved with the Animal ID system.  They said that the farmers and ranchers trust FSA, and would feel confident that they would be able to handle the job.  They did however say that they were very concerned that this information needs to be exempt from the FIOA.

Bonnie Heinzman, NASCOE Secretary told us that Charlotte Saunders lung transplant 8 months ago is accepting her body.  She still is having some trouble getting the medications to work together.  Charlotte said to say hello to everyone and thank you for the continued support and prayers.

The rest of the day was spent with the MWA group, chaired by Chris Hollis MWA Exec., and Tammy Eibey, MWA Legislative Chairperson.  Tammy and the other Area Legislative Chairpersons did a very good job preparing position papers for all of us to take to the Hill.  We went over the papers as a group and discussed how we would address the papers to Congress.  Tom, Jon, Deb, and Kathy then met do plan how WASCOE would present the information to our Senators and Representatives.

Before the next days meetings began we had the opportunity to visit the USDA building.  WOW!  That place is huge!  We were able to visit with both Iris and Bill Baker (Bill was able to break away with us for lunch).  Both of them look good, and are getting used to the WDC lifestyle.  The said to tell everyone back home hello!  After seeing the small cubicles and endless hallways that people work in out in WDC, it made all of us appreciate our offices back home, and applaud them for their willingness to work there for us!

The next day James Little, FSA Administrator met with the group.  Mr. Little told us that CDP, LAP and the Tobacco Buy Out programs are scheduled to start on March 14, 2005.  He stated that the Tobacco Buy Out program is not funded by tax dollars, rather it will be funded by assessments on tobacco companies, and users of tobacco products.

Mr. Little stated that FSA Received $5 million dollars to help deliver CDP, but we did not receive any additional funding to deliver the other programs.

He stated that FSA is $42.5 million short for it’s 2005 operating budget.  He did make sure that enough money was to be set aside to fund FSA at it’s current staffing levels, and that the $42.5 million would have to come from travel, IT, and other expenses.  He thinks that the 2006 budget looks somewhat better, but will still require tremendous cutbacks in the travel, IT, and other expenses.

Mr. Little spoke about the President’s budget proposal for Agriculture.  In a nut shell, the proposal would be to limit the current $360,000 Payment Limitation per person to $250,000 Payment Limitation per person;  LDPs/market gains would be limited to 85% of the yield (like DCP);  no more Commodity Certificate Exchange;  reduce DCP and MILC payments by 5%.  Conservation Reserve Program and other contractual programs would remain at their current levels.

Finally Mr. Little stated that FSA received over 5,000 comments on what to do 2007 and 2008.  He was confident that FSA will continue to administer the program that they have so successfully administered for the last 20 years.

We had several guest speakers from different agricultural groups meet with us (Mary Kay Thatcher, Director of Public Policy, American Farm Bureau Federation;  Bob Guenther, VP of Public Policy, United Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Assoc.;  Keith Gray, Director of National Affairs, Alabama Farmers Federation;  Ben Noble, VP of Federal Affairs, Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group;  and John Maguire, Senior VP, Washington Operations, National Cotton Council of America).  All of the speakers said that their organizations support the members of NASCOE, and the commitment NASCOE members routinely display delivering USDA programs to America’s farmers and ranchers.  They all echoed each other in saying that now is not the time to reopen the Farm Bill.  With the WTO meeting soon, we cannot reduce payments now and be required by the WTO to reduce them again (they said that would be like spotting a basketball team 20 points between two evenly matched teams).  This would then  really put our farmers and ranchers at a distinct disadvantage.  On average American farmers and ranchers receive about $42 per acre, with other countries subsidizing their farmers from $300 to $6,000 per acre.

Chuck Jagger, House Ag Economist spoke to us about the process used to reopen the Farm Bill.  He liked the way FSA uses a workload system to account for the work the NASCOE members do.  He was asked how other agencies account for the work they do, and he said, like I said, I like the way FSA counts workload!

RASCOE and NAFEC informed us that they are continually fighting for NASCOE, from Farm Bill legislation to retirement benefits.

We then went to the Hill the next day.  We had to split up to make all of the appointments (two persons at each office).  Every visit was very positive, with the majority of the Legislative Assistant’s and Congresspersons being fully knowledgeable of FSA and the programs the members of WASCOE/NASCOE deliver to Wisconsin’s farmers.  We were able to meet directly with Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., and his Legislative Aide.  The Congressman was very receptive to using FSA’s GIS/GPS technology to be a part of the Animal Livestock ID System.  We pointed out to the Congressman that many farmers and ranchers are concerned that the information would be available to the public. The Congressman, who is the Majority Chairperson on the Judicial Committee thought his committee could propose legislation to make any information related to the animal ID system exempt from FOIA.

Also each office seemed very interested in looking into allowing County Office FERS employees to apply unused sick leave towards retirement calculations.

Congressman Ryan was only able to meet with us very briefly.  He apologized to us, and had to run off to his next meeting.  From what all of us were told, when Congress is in session, it is a zoo around there! Many of the other Congressman and Senators also asked their LA’s to apologize to us for not being able to meet directly with us.

Many of the congressional offices indicated that they think we should have a base line for permanent County Office employees. They suggested that we need to remind the policy makers when they are drafting the new Farm Bill to include that in the bill.  Over all seemed very positive.

In our discussions after the meeting, we all agreed that our congressional offices seem to truly care about WASCOE and the farmers of Wisconsin.

Deb Esselman will post the position papers that we took to the Hill on the WASCOE web site for all of you to review (www.wiwascoe.org). 

We would all like to thank you for allowing us to be your WASCOE/NASCOE representatives!

If you have any questions, please let any of us know.

Thank you!

Tom Oasen, VP/Legislative Chairperson

Jon Williams, President

Deb Esselman, Secretary

Kathy Morton, Member