House Agriculture Committee Democrats have offered a counter proposal on the farm bill that suggests using USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation funding authority to shore up commodity programs and crop insurance, according to a summary of the proposal obtained by Agri-Pulse.
The one-page summary, delivered to the committee’s Republican majority during last week’s congressional break, opposes eliminating USDA’s Section 5 CCC authority entirely, but says the committee’s ranking member, David Scott of Georgia, proposes using “alternative methods of capturing CCC funds.”
The summary provides no detail of how that could be done but does spell out how CCC could be used. Those priorities include funding “a significant investment in the farm safety net,” including making “crop insurance more affordable for beginning farmers” and providing “enhancements” to the Agriculture Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage programs as well as commodity marketing loans.
Additional money could fund some nutrition assistance programs, including by offsetting the cost of eliminating the ban on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for people with felony drug convictions.
Section 5 of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act is the broad spending authority that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and his predecessor, Sonny Perdue, have used to fund everything from trade assistance, pandemic aid and the Biden administration’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative.
The Democratic offer doesn’t say how the CCC funding should be allocated, but says that the CCC could be used to provide “tens of billions that could be reinvested in a bipartisan farm bill.”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has suggested using CCC authority to supplement farm bill funding as he has done recently for trade promotion and international food aid. Elaborating on his idea recently, Vilsack said that instead of canceling Section 5 authority lawmakers could specifically define how the authority is to be used for augment programs such as ARC and PLC.
The Congressional Budget Office’s 10-year projections for farm program spending suggest that canceling Section 5 authority would provide $10 billion for the farm bill.
Also in the summary, committee Democrats doubled down on their opposition to impose restrictions on the Thrifty Food Plan, the economic model that is used to estimate the cost of food and set SNAP benefits.
“On SNAP, the Ranking Member and Committee Democrats continue to propose no cuts to SNAP. Because it cuts future benefits, we cannot accept the Chairman’s Thrifty Food Plan cost- neutrality provisions. We note this remains the biggest obstacle to a bipartisan farm bill,” the summary says.
Democrats also continue to insist that the Inflation Reduction Act conservation funding be limited to climate-related practices, and they also continued to be opposed to any cuts in nutrition funding.
Republicans are proposing to bring $14.4 billion of IRA funding into the farm bill, remove the climate guardrails, and reallocate some of the money to the Conservation Reserve Program and other initiatives. One of the latter, according to a source who attended a series of stakeholder meetings with GOP staff last week, is a forest conservation easement program.
The summary concludes, “While acceptance of this framework would require subsequent negotiations to iron out the remaining details, the Ranking Member believes that with the support of the Chairman, this framework can serve as the basis of putting together a bipartisan farm bill that will engender Democratic support.”
A spokesman for committee Republicans, Ben Goldey, said in a statement responding to the Democratic counteroffer, “We are not going to negotiate the details of this farm bill in the press. We are ready to work with any members should they decide to come to the table with serious proposals.”
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Some committee Democrats provided statements to Agri-Pulse about the counteroffer.
“We need to be focused on getting a bipartisan farm bill across the finish line, and this proposal is a thoughtful counterproposal. Right now, Republicans do not seem to have the votes or floor strategy to pass a farm bill on their own,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va.
She said Democrats “continue to insist that there is a viable path forward for a bipartisan farm bill that invests in America’s crop and livestock producers — without making drastic cuts to critical conservation and food security programs.”
Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., said, “My caucus and I have been at the table every step of the way -- and we've proposed a clear and realistic bipartisan path forward. I hope that my Republican colleagues don’t waste a critical opportunity to serve our family farmers by catering to the extreme voices insistent on harmful cuts to SNAP.”
Rep. Andrea Salinas, D-Ore., said she has maintained an “open-door policy with my Republican colleagues about my willingness to work together to accomplish that goal. Democrats have been very clear about the areas where we can find consensus and move this legislation across the finish line.
“That is why I am disappointed to see Republicans pushing a partisan bill and walking away from the negotiating table. What’s more, they are not being transparent about where their funding will come from, promising the moon to stakeholders when they know this bill has no chance of passing on the House floor. That isn’t real compromise.”
Noah Wicks contributed to this report.
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