USDANEWS                                                           VOLUME 58 NO.2 - FEBRUARY 1999

USDA’s 2000 Budget Calls For Cut Of $4.1 Billion, Gain Of 412 Fed Staff Years

by Ron Hall, Office of Communications

As the Department gets set to enter the new millennium, its FY 2000 budget proposal calls for new proposals to assist farmers, preserve farmland, enhance food safety, and fight hunger--and with fewer human and monetary resources than it had six years ago.

Secretary Dan Glickman made that point as he spoke at a press conference, held on February 1, to present the budget. Glickman, Deputy Secretary Richard Rominger, and Office of Budget and Program Analysis Director Steve Dewhurst highlighted items of importance in USDA’s proposed budget for FY 2000.

Glickman said that the Department’s budget proposal “expands assistance to farmers, preserves farmland and open spaces, intensifies our fight against foodborne illness, and helps feed America’s hungry.”

“And it does all this with significantly less money and less staff than we had at the start of this Administration.”

USDA’s overall budget proposal for FY 2000 calls for a program level of $90.1 billion and federal cash outlays of $55.2 billion. This represents a 4.3 percent decrease--by over $4.1 billion--from the currently estimated FY99 program level of $94.2 billion, as well as a 12.9 percent decrease--by $8.2 billion--from the currently estimated FY99 cash outlay level of $63.4 billion.

Budget officials generally regard “program level” figures as the best method for describing the total scope of federal activities, including all services, loans, and grants in a budget. This is because “Federal cash outlay” figures--while generally publicized more frequently--often don’t clearly reflect the total magnitude of Federal activities, since some loan program outlay figures are either excluded or presented in net present value terms.

USDA’s budget proposes a Federal staffing level for FY 2000 of 97,605 full-time equivalent positions, or Federal staff years. This represents an increase of 412 Federal staff years from the currently estimated FY99 Federal staff year level of 97,193.

Agencies which reflect proposed increases in Federal staff years include the Forest Service (an increase of 630 Federal staff years, to total 35,614 Federal staff years), the Food and Nutrition Service (88, to total 1,805), the Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (35, to total 440), Departmental Administration (29, to total 730), the National Agricultural Statistics Service (6, to total 1,146), the Risk Management Agency (5, to total 550), the Office of the General Counsel (5, to total 379), and the Office of the Chief Information Officer (3, to total 275).

Agencies with the largest proposed decreases in Federal staff years include the Natural Resources Conservation Service (a decrease of 272 Federal staff years, to total 11,194 Federal staff years), the Farm Service Agency (100, to total 5,745), the Rural Housing Service (28, to total 6,081), the Office of the Chief Financial Officer (15, to total 1,171), and the Foreign Agricultural Service (15, to total 885). The non-Federal county employees of FSA are proposed to be reduced by 652 non-Federal staff years, to total 10,048 non-Federal staff years.

These Federal staff year estimates are all subject to adjustments to reflect the final outcome of budget negotiations, including such unpredictable factors as the need for supplemental appropriations to cover natural disasters and other emergencies.

By comparison, one year ago USDA’s proposed budget for FY99 called for a staffing level of 97,050 Federal staff years--a decrease of 1,964 from the previous year--and a program level of $86.4 billion--a $3.1 billion increase from the previous year.

Highlights of USDA’s FY 2000 budget proposal, thought to be of particular interest to employees, include:

• Continuing the Department’s field office streamlining plan which collocates its county-based agencies (FSA, NRCS, and Rural Development) in one-stop USDA Service Centers. This is to result in streamlining the total number of field office locations from over 3,700 in 1994 to about 2,560. All USDA Service Center agency offices across the country are to have a common telecommunications network allowing efficient e-mail, records transfer, and voice communications for better customer service.
• Establishing a new account--the Support Services Bureau--to provide consolidated administrative support functions, including information technology, as part of USDA’s “administrative convergence” initiative. The August 1998 issue of the USDA News carried a story about “administrative convergence.”
• Providing an increase of $837,000 to the Office of Civil Rights to process civil rights complaints submitted under the change to the statute of limitations enacted in the 1999 Agriculture Appropriations Act.
• Providing an increase of $802,000 to CR to expand its employment complaints investigation capability and enhance complaint tracking for increased accountability.
• An increase of $156 million, to total nearly $1.5 billion, for loans and grants to provide over one million rural Americans with safe, affordable drinking water.
• An additional $50 million for research to better understand the implications of global climate change for agriculture and forestry and to develop technology to help moderate climate change.
• $20 million to the Agricultural Research Service for expanded human nutrition research, focusing on nutrition’s role in preventing cancer, heart disease, and bone loss.

USDA’s proposed budget for FY 2000 was transmitted to Congress earlier on the same day as the Department’s press conference. 

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