REAPing a Budgetary Whirlwind

IN the forthcoming budget confrontation between President Nixon and Congress, the first showdown will probably involve a $225 million program that few urban Americans have ever heard of: the Rural Environmental Assistance Program, or REAP. It is a classic case of an originally worthwhile program that outlived its usefulness but gained such a large constituency of supporters that several Presidents have failed in attempts to cut it.

When REAP was started 37 years ago, the idea was that the Government would subsidize farmers to undertake such conservation practices as terracing their land, reseeding grassland and spreading lime on their fields to enrich them. The plan made sense in 1936: better conservation was urgently required to prevent the spread of dust bowls, and farm income in those Depression days needed bolstering by any means available.

Over the decades, farmers' income has grown to record highs, and REAP has degenerated into a pork barrel. Many farmers were paid year after year for continuing conservation practices that they were originally encouraged to start as a demonstration for their neighbors. Some REAP drainage projects destroyed wetlands needed by wildlife and subsidized the growing of potatoes in Idaho to the detriment of potato farmers in Maine. Former Agriculture Under Secretary John Schnittker voices the most telling criticism of the program: "REAP subsidizes farmers to do what they would do anyway. Most conservation practices are themselves profitable."

Four Presidents--Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon--have asked Congress to reduce REAP appropriations. But as the only Agriculture Department program that distributes money (some $8 billion since 1936) in all 3,060 U.S. farm counties, REAP has vocal farmer-defenders in every state. Businessmen who sell to farmers also benefit--and speak up politically. Robert Koch, president of the National Limestone Institute, mutters darkly that if REAP is killed, "our land will get worn out and go the way of India and China." The pro-REAP coalition has managed to get new money voted for REAP every year.

President Nixon, who voted against the program as a Representative and Senator, is now trying to kill REAP altogether. Three days before Christmas, with only $5,000,000 of the fiscal 1973 appropriation contracted out, he simply ordered the Agriculture Department not to spend the remaining $220 million. His action has stirred a whirlwind of resentment among some Representatives and Senators who are determined to see Congress retain its power over the national purse strings. Several bills that aim at forcing Nixon to spend the REAP money have been introduced. Says one of the sponsors, Iowa Republican Congressman William Scherle: "I don't blame the President for this. I blame those Katzenjammer Kids at the White House. They don't know the difference between an ear of corn and a bale of hay." Meanwhile Wyoming Democrat Gale McGee, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, says that he will refuse to hold hearings on or vote any money for the President's agriculture budget until REAP and all other impounded farm funds are restored. Speaking of the President's budget makers, he fumes: "They will get zilch, zero, nothing."

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