This year is starting right where the last one left off on Capitol Hill.
The GOP-controlled House continues to be dysfunctional. GOP leaders were unable to bring a partisan bill to the floor Wednesday when hardline conservatives upset about a budget agreement voted against a rule.
It used to be highly unusual for the members of a majority party to kill the rule for one of their bills. But hardliners say they’re determined to do what they can to force Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to renegotiate the top-line spending limit for fiscal 2024. “This was a statement to have a protest to say, hey, ‘We're not going to just go along to get along like everything's okay’,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Bob Good, R-Va., told reporters.
Meanwhile, House Ag Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, continues eyeing March for possible action on a farm bill, but he still lacks Democratic support for GOP ideas for funding increased spending in the legislation. Democrats “obviously have a lot of priorities. … Most of them are shared interests. Most of them are not going to happen in this farm bill without some additional funding,” he told reporters.
GT plans to work through cancer treatment
Thompson is wearing a face mask this week because he was diagnosed with pneumonia over the holiday break. Thompson says the pneumonia delayed the start of treatment for prostate cancer, a diagnosis he announced in early December.
Thompson says he intends to keep working through the treatment, which is a good thing for the House GOP leadership, which is already operating with a razor-thin margin.
Thompson blames the pneumonia on a pair of trips he took, one to Arkansas for a farm bill listening session and duck hunting excursion, the other to the Mexican border last week with his GOP colleagues.
“I should have taken some time off in December. I made some bad decisions,” Thompson said.
Have gun – will travel (or maybe not)
Speaking of duck hunting, Thompson wound up having to borrow a shotgun after an airline routed his prize Browning over-and-under to Jamaica rather than Memphis. Thompson arrived in Memphis to find not his gun, but a suitcase belonging to someone who had flown to Jamaica.
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Thompson’s still trying to get his gun back, and yes, the U.S. embassy is involved.
“At least they could have screwed up and sent my gun to Tennessee and sent me to Jamaica,” he quipped.
Western, Plains senators appeal for farm bill drought measures
A bipartisan group of 16 senators from the West and Great Plains is calling on Senate Agriculture Committee leaders to include in the next farm bill provisions related to drought and dwindling water resources. The senators are concerned the measures may be omitted.
In a letter being sent today to Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and ranking member John Boozman, R-Ark., the senators say producers in their states want a “multi-year farm bill that provides support to conserve water, improve watershed scale planning, upgrade water infrastructure, protect land from erosion, and create long-term resiliency on changing landscapes for growers in drought-affected regions.”
An aide to Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., tells Agri-Pulse that conversations with Senate Ag Committee staff raised concerns that drought provisions “are at risk of not being included in the farm bill.”
"We must ensure that any multi-year farm bill adequately addresses the heightened production risks posed by a hotter, drier future, particularly in states West of the 100th meridian,” the lawmakers write.
Grocery prices seen flat for 2024
Food inflation is headed down to about a half percent as we start the year and trending down towards zero or slightly negative at the end of 2024, says Michael Swanson, chief ag economist at Wells Fargo’s Agri-Food Institute. That’s more or less in line with USDA’s forecast for supermarket prices to fall 0.6% this year.
Speaking on a North American Agricultural Journalists’ webinar, Swanson said dairy prices have started the year already significantly lower, and milk supply has not yet softened as a result.
Swanson expects the cost of eating away from home to stay relatively high. “We’re still closer to 6% right now,” he said, adding that consumers continue to pay those higher prices.
FDA petitioned to remove solvents from food
FDA will consider petitions seeking to end the use of solvents as food and color additives.
The Environmental Defense Fund, Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, Center for Environmental Health, Environmental Working Group and Lisa Lefferts submitted two petitions: One targets use of ethylene dichloride, methylene chloride and trichloroethylene as color additives; the other seeks removal of those three solvents, as well as benzene, from use as food additives.
A 60-day public comment period begins today. There’s no official deadline by which FDA must respond to the petitions.
He said it. “I don’t know of a farm bill where we’ve hired and fired so many speakers of the House. That’s just the start of what we’re dealing with here.” – House Ag Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., when asked how the House dysfunction could affect the farm bill.
Noah Wicks, Steve Davies and Jacqui Fatka contributed to this report.
