Political Quotes

“there has been a lot made of the sequester and the things that may or may not happen associated with it. Having spent the last 8 years looking at the Federal Government, I wrote the Secretary of Agriculture a letter this week outlining some things they could do that would not put in jeopardy food inspection and other things. In my 8 years of looking at the Department of Agriculture, there is extensive waste and duplication--the GAO has confirmed that--and those things should be cut first and eliminated and consolidated before staffs that are in critical positions are furloughed. The USDA currently has 120,000 employees, and they have over 16,000 offices. Just thinking about 16,000 offices ought to give us some pause. Why would any agency, no matter what their requirements, need that number of offices? The agency notes on their Web site that if they were a private company, they would be the sixth largest private company in America. That is how big the USDA is and how diffusive. Today, there is one USDA employee for every eight farmers--one USDA employee for every eight people employed in the farm area--or, overall, one USDA employee for every 18 farms, primary or otherwise. So weekend farmers have a USDA employee, and for regular farmers--people where it is their primary business--there is an employee for every eight of them. At the end of 2012, USDA was sitting on $12 billion in unobligated Federal balances.…”