The budget reconciliation bill that congressional Republicans want to pass this year to enact President Donald Trump’s policy priorities and extend expiring tax cuts is emerging as a possible vehicle to enact portions of a new farm bill, including high reference prices.
Congressional rules allow a reconciliation bill to pass the Senate without the 60 votes necessary to move most other legislation. But the rules also limit reconciliation to provisions that increase or decrease spending and revenues.
Increasing Price Loss Coverage reference prices could likely ride in a reconciliation measure, as could several other parts of a farm bill, such as cuts in nutrition assistance, budget experts say.
Adding those farm bill provisions to a reconciliation measure could solve a couple of problems facing the agriculture committees – a lack of funding for a standalone farm bill and the difficulty of passing a farm bill through the closely divided House. A bill the House Ag Committee approved last May never made it to the House floor.
“We're discussing a whole lot of things,” Senate Ag Committee Chair John Boozman, R-Ark., said when asked by Agri-Pulse if lawmakers were planning to use the reconciliation process to pass elements of the farm bill, including enhancements to commodity programs.
“We're talking to our House counterparts, as to what they're going to do and what's expected of them. [We’re] talking to Senator Graham on our side, trying to figure out a path forward,” Boozman added, referring to Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is helping shape the reconciliation measure.
One of the problems facing the House Ag farm bill last year is that it reduced future Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spending and used the savings to help fund other areas of the legislation, a move Democrats opposed. A farm bill generally needs Democratic support to pass the House because of opposition from some Republicans.
Because reconciliation wouldn’t need Democratic votes to pass either chamber – assuming GOP leaders can agree on what should be in the legislation – Republicans could have more leeway to move money around among SNAP and other programs.
“There's lots of discussions about all kinds of things, lots of different ideas,” Boozman said. “The reality is to pass a farm bill that’s going to make a difference for our producers, to give them the risk management tools that they need. It's going to cost some money, so we're going to need to find that someplace, and that's a vehicle that we could look to maybe be able to do that.”
A spokesperson for House Ag Committee Republicans, Ben Goldey, said in a statement, “All options are on the table to secure a stronger safety net for our hardworking farmers.”
Trump has said he prefers “one big, beautiful” reconciliation bill to enact his priorities, including new and existing tax cuts, but hasn’t said whether he would support including farm programs.
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Chuck Conner, president and CEO of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, said at the Agri-Pulse Ag & Food Policy Summit on Monday that reconciliation could be a vehicle for elements of a new farm bill.
Chuck Conner (NCFC photo)“Just given how few bills are going to pass [this year], you have to believe there's a chance that the farm bill and other priorities might be a part of that reconciliation process if they can get to that stage,” Conner said.
Using reconciliation to pass parts of a farm bill has its political downsides, too. Some elements of the farm bill would be left behind because the Senate parliamentarian presumably would rule that they couldn’t be included. Congressional Democrats and supporters of nutrition assistance programs also could object to using SNAP funding to pay for commodity programs, making it more difficult to pass other farm bill programs in the future.
A Senate Ag Committee Democrat who supports higher reference prices, Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., told Agri-Pulse that lawmakers need to raise those prices and also protect nutrition funding.
“I would hope that we could find a way to get a farm bill done. … I think we need an increase in the reference price for commodities. I continue to support that, and I continue to support the nutrition for families that are food insecure, and the folks who argue that it's one or the other are presenting us with a false choice that I wholly reject,” Warnock said.
Joby Young, executive vice president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, expressed some concern about the political impact of attaching parts of a farm bill to a partisan reconciliation bill.
Speaking at the Agri-Pulse summit, he said, “We have to continue to solve these problems years into the future, and it's always been best done in a bipartisan way.”
Conner said he didn’t think political differences over a new farm bill were as significant as in the past. “I would like to see regular order proceed there. But realistically, just given Congress and their ability to not be able to get things done, I think [reconciliation is] an option,” he said.
Rebekah Alvey contributed to this report.
