WASHINGTON -- The economic stimulus package moving through Congress will contain $250 million to fix long-term problems in the agriculture department computer system, congressional leaders said during inaugural week.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., revealed at a National Farmers Union inaugural reception Jan. 19 that the long-sought money would be in the bill.
Modernizing
Peterson told the Farmers Union that USDA had requested $300 million and that the stimulus package would provide $250 million. Peterson, who is an accountant by profession, noted that he had some experience in the computer business before his election to Congress and that he trusts the USDA request because it comes from the computer professionals that USDA has hired to evaluate the agency's long-term problems in modernizing its computer systems rather than from Bush administration political appointees. Peterson also said he has urged Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to retain the same computer experts. Peterson said that for the computer modernization to work, USDA must stop doing its programming in COBOL, an old computer language, and use a more up-to-date language.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., also confirmed that the money is in the bill and said he thinks the $250 million will go a long way to solving the problem. But Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., a former House Agriculture Committee chairman and ranking member, said he hopes USDA will spend the money properly. USDA has received millions of dollars for computers in recent years.
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Power struggle
Some agency employees have said that USDA employees have wasted the money because they do not want to make changes in the computer system so that agencies like the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Risk Management Agency can communicate more easily because entrenched bureaucrats think that keeping the computer systems separate is a way of preserving its power. The Bush administration urged farmers to file for subsidies online but discovered that the computer system did not work well. Only about 1 percent of farmers file for benefits online.
