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...
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