Country needs USDA Rural Development – Iowa Farmer Today

We write to express our opposition to the USDA Fiscal Year 2018 budget for Rural Development. This budget, if enacted, along with the ill-advised recommendation to eliminate the position of Under Secretary for Rural Development, will substantially diminish resources dedicated to improving rural communities and the lives of rural people.

We believe a better choice for rural America is to continue USDA Rural Development programs at no less than the FY 2017 levels included in Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017 (115-31). This will allow USDA Rural Development to continue its important mission of providing technical and financial assistance aimed at improving the living and economic conditions in rural America.

For more than 50 years, USDA rural development programs have improved housing, utilities and community facilities, and economic opportunity for rural America.

In FY 2016 alone USDA made available over $29 billion in loans, guarantees, grants, and related assistance to over 157,000 individuals, businesses, non-profit corporations, cooperatives and governments. USDAs total loan portfolio includes over 1.3 million loans that amount to over $215 billion.

Yet, there is still more to be done: According to an analysis of socio-economic well-being prepared by the Wall Street Journal, rural counties in America are in worse condition than big cities, suburbs and small or medium metro areas. Rural communities, and the people who live in them, have higher poverty and unemployment rates as well as a higher incidence of substandard housing and rent overburden when compared to metropolitan areas.

Virtually every community in the country with inadequate drinking water has a population of 3,300 or less. Although much of the country has seen recovery from the financial crisis, rural America still lags behind.

The decades long trend of community bank closure and consolidation has hit rural areas particularly hard. The number of community banks in the United States has declined by an average of 300 per year over the past 30 years, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and a collapse in the price of agricultural commodities has added stress on many small towns and farming communities.

The administrations response to the problems facing rural America can only be described as a wholesale retreat. The FY 2018 budget eliminates funding for two dozen housing and rural development programs. The rescissions proposed for FY 17 and eliminations and reductions proposed for FY 18 total over $1 billion and well over $3 billion in program financing.

If approved, USDA will no longer provide direct rural housing loans, grants for mutual and self-help housing, financing for water and waste disposal systems, or loans and grants to small rural businesses, cooperatives and value added producers. Many other programs are reduced well below the current rate. What will be left is a hollowed-out Rural Development function, degraded within the department with far fewer resources to help rural America.

We urge the committee to reject the administrations FY 18 budget and reorganization proposals for Rural Development and instead provide appropriations at no less than the current rate and maintain the Rural Development mission area and position of Under Secretary for Rural Development.

The National Rural Housing Coalition campaigns to improve housing and community facilities for low-income rural families. These comments are from a sign-on letter to the House and Senate appropriations committees; full text is at http://bit.ly/2qJALEc.

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Country needs USDA Rural Development - Iowa Farmer Today