Making USDA more accountable

Richard G. Lugar

Excerpt

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, a 130-year-old enterprise that now spends $60 billion a year, is in essence a large corporation badly in need of a major restructuring executed with a firm hand by well-intentioned management.

If USDA were a nation, its budget would rank as the 18th largest in the world. As an American corporation, it would rank fourth, after General Motors, Exxon, and Ford.

I asked department officials in November 1991 for a thorough accounting of three basic items: (1) the size and whereabouts of the department's staff, (2) the amount of tax money spent on and by these employees, and (3) the nature of the work performed by them and the offices.

On February 3 of this year I received a memo from USDA stating in part, “You asked for the number of local USDA offices around the country. We have tried to get a straight answer to this question for as long as I have been here. Our staff still cannot …

Footnotes

Richard G. Lugar is a U.S. Senator from Indiana and ranking minority member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, 306 Hart Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510.
Copyright 1992 by the Soil and Water Conservation Society

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