Obama administration officials this week will defend a request to boost the budget of the Agriculture Department's auditing and investigations capacity.

President Obama has requested a $3 million increase from estimated fiscal 2012 levels for USDA's Office of Inspector General, the bulk of which would be spent in investigating the department's programs. The total request of $89 million would bring the office back up to fiscal 2011 funding levels.

USDA Inspector General Phyllis Fong and Deputy Inspector General David Gray are among the witnesses who will explain the budget increase at a hearing Wednesday of the House Agriculture, Rural Development, FDA and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee.

They will also likely tout the office's work from the past fiscal year and go through their near-term goals for the future.

In fiscal 2011, OIG audits led to 249 convictions and found nearly $114 million in fraud and abuse that USDA could reclaim, according to semiannual reports released by the office.

In one case, an investigation led to sanctions against three west Texas irrigation companies for submitting inflated invoices for reimbursements through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps producers make environmental improvements on their lands.

In other instances, the office found that agencies within USDA were not appropriately administering programs. The inspector general, for example, criticized the Forest Service for ineffectively running the Special Use Program, which allows companies and individuals to use federal forestland for a variety of uses, such as running oil and gas pipelines.

Fong will likely highlight a number of goals from the office's annual plan for fiscal 2012. One of those was to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of natural resources conservation activities.

Under that broad category, the inspector general's office said it hoped to determine whether the Forest Service is properly obtaining and modifying rights-of-way and easements for federal lands. The office also planned to investigate whether producers in two conservation programs were complying with highly erodible land provisions.

Last year's annual report to the appropriations subpanel focused partly on the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, a program that pays producers to grow renewable biomass crops. Fong told the subcommittee that the program suffered from hasty implementation and was applied inconsistently across state and county offices.

Appropriators told Fong then that they were frustrated with those errors and others that had cost USDA millions of dollars (E&E Daily, March 3, 2011).

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 29, at 2 p.m. in 2362A Rayburn.

Witnesses: Phyllis Fong, USDA inspector general; David Gray, USDA deputy inspector general; Karen Ellis, USDA assistant inspector general for investigations; and Gil Harden, USDA assistant inspector general for audit.