The House Appropriations Committee Wednesday voted to zero out the salaries of two Clinton administration appointees in the Agriculture Department's Farm Service Agency after Rep. George Nethercutt, R-Wash., expressed anger that the FSA had approved so few acres in his state for the land-idling Conservation Reserve Program in comparison with neighboring Idaho and Oregon.
The officials are FSA Deputy Administrator Richard Newman and Assistant Deputy Administrator Parks Shackleford, who had direct responsibility for the CRP.
Nethercutt later said he offered the amendment to the fiscal 1998 Agriculture appropriations bill because local offices of the FSA and the Natural Resources Conservation Service had done a study of the CRP signup which showed farmers in Washington state were provided different information than those in Idaho and Oregon, resulting in a lower approval rate for applications from Washington farmers.
Nethercutt said Newman and Shackleford had rejected taking any action on the study and told him any corrections could be made in the next CRP signup, probably in September or October. Nethercutt said that signup would be too late for winter wheat farmers.
A spokesman for Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said that "while we understand the congressman's frustration, we think it is unfortunate he would express it in such a personal way," and that Glickman has promised to visit Nethercutt's district to analyze the situation before the next CRP signup, which he said will be held "sooner rather than later."
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