Senators consider cutting Agriculture IT funds from stimulus

The money for a much-needed technology upgrade at the Farm Service Agency is in jeopardy of being cut from the Senate economic stimulus bill, but one critic says the move would jeopardize the financial well-being of farmers nationwide.

Citing urgent economic conditions, President Obama and key advisers pressed Senate Democrats on Wednesday to allow spending cuts that would increase the odds of Republican backing for the bill, senators said. Among the items facing cuts is $171 million allocated for the Agriculture Department's information technology stabilization program, money the agency has said is sorely needed to maintain the systems that process government loan and subsidy payments to farmers.

Senate Republicans have hammered Democrats over spending in the bill, including millions of dollars for computers at Agriculture and the Interior Department, as well as funding for HIV screening, wildlife management and NASA programs. Obama met with Senate leaders to discuss areas where cuts could be considered, including health care and education.

Senators said Obama did not discuss specific amendments to the recovery bill, but momentum appears to be building for one being drafted by Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Ben Nelson, D-Neb., that would target what backers call "nonstimulative" spending in the bill.

"If we have to get rid of some little things to get rid of those talking points, then we should do that," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.

But that might not be easy. House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said on Wednesday that they would resist the efforts of Collins and Nelson to remove the money for USDA computers. House Agriculture Chairman Colin Peterson, D-Minn., also has been an advocate for the funding.

Vilsack noted that the Obama administration is placing a high priority on agencies being accountable and said that would be difficult in his department without a new computer system to generate data. A source close to the situation said Vilsack also has been in contact with Collins' office in an attempt to emphasize how crucial it is for Agriculture to receive the funds to stabilize the aging IT infrastructure at the Farm Service Agency.

The source, who asked not to be named, said the money is needed to ensure that FSA's systems can continue to process payments to farmers and that without the money, the system could become overwhelmed and fail, as it did in January 2007. During the monthlong network outage, payments to farmers were sent out late or not at all.

The $171 million in the Senate stimulus bill is far short of the $245 million in the House version, but would allow FSA to stabilize its systems in time to ensure payments to farmers under the 2008 Farm Bill. The source said farmers are at risk of "individual financial catastrophe" without the government assistance. The Farm Bill system is expected to cost $55 million; FSA included the funds in past budget requests, but they never made it through the appropriations process.

Of the remaining funds, $51 million would be used to support the existing Web-based system of payment processing for farmers and to create a contingency computing infrastructure.

The rest of the funds, $65 million, would be used to initiate FSA's modernization program, with the goal of ending the agency's reliance on antiquated mainframe technology, which uses the COBOL programming language. The source said the funding would help create about 500 jobs while ensuring that the country's 2 million farmers receive the nearly $20 billion in farm program and disaster relief payments they rely on to remain solvent.