Senate Republicans are sharply divided over key parts of the House GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill and President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda ahead of a critical summer session and a looming deadline imposed by the U.S. debt ceiling.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and some other deficit hawks are unhappy with the projected increase in deficits that would be created by the House-passed budget reconciliation bill, while more moderate GOP senators are concerned about cuts the House bill would make to Medicaid, SNAP and clean energy tax breaks.
Meanwhile this week, House appropriators start work on their fiscal 2026 spending bills, including the Agriculture measure needed to fund USDA and FDA, and Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins heads to Italy on another trade mission.
The House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee will consider its FY26 bill on Thursday, with full committee debate set the following week.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., hasn’t said yet whether the Senate will move the House reconciliation through Senate committees or instead put a modified version directly on the Senate floor. And it’s not clear Thune has the votes to move a single bill anyway.
“We’ve got enough senators who are going to dig their heels in,” Johnson told Fox Business last week, referring to his colleagues who want more deficit reduction.
He suggested Congress pass a short-term increase in the debt ceiling into early next year. “That would keep pressure on the process to again get serious about spending reduction and deficit reduction,” Johnson said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is trying to discredit the Congressional Budget Office forecast that the bill would increase deficits while saying that Republicans planned additional bills to cut spending.
“They’re always off, every single time, when they project economic growth. They always underestimate the growth that will be brought about by tax cuts and reductions in regulations,” Johnson said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press.
In an earlier interview with Fox News, the speaker downplayed divisions between the Senate and House over the bill. “We’ve been working hand in hand with the Senate from the beginning of this process to ensure that it really is a one-team approach,” he said.
The Tax Foundation estimates the bill would increase the deficit by $2.6 trillion from 2025 through 2034 based on conventional scoring methods. On a dynamic basis, which attempts to account for economic growth, the deficit would increase by $1.7 trillion, the group says.
The stakes for agriculture in the reconciliation are huge. The House bill extends and expands expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act while also increasing spending for commodity programs, crop insurance and foreign market promotion, funded from cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The bill also brings Inflation Reduction conservation funding into the farm bill baseline, permanently increasing funding levels for four popular programs.
Rollins, who completed her first international trade mission to the United Kingdom last month, will be in Rome Monday and Tuesday. During the visit, she will “reinforce the administration’s expectations for improved agricultural market access to Italy and the European Union and will encourage the United Nations organizations in Rome to prioritize American interests, reduce costs, and focus on their core mandates,” according to a USDA advisory.
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During her stay in Rome, Rollins will meet with Italian officials as well as UN Food and Agriculture Organization Director General Qu Dongyu and UN World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain.
The visit with McCain comes amid uncertainty about the future of U.S. foreign assistance programs.
“The United States’ relationships with Italian buyers and consumers foster tens of billions in bilateral trade and investment. However, U.S. agricultural stakeholders have been unfairly left behind for far too long by the European Union and Italy’s high tariffs on U.S. agricultural products and numerous non-tariff barriers,” Rollins said.
Rollins also will go to India, Vietnam, Japan, Peru, and Brazil over the next four months, the department says.
The Rollins trade mission comes as the department has delayed release of the department’s quarterly trade outlook, which should provide the first forecast of how Trump’s trade policy is affecting agricultural exports. The outlook was scheduled to be released last Thursday but as of this weekend the department said it is still “under review.”
The February forecast projected that fiscal 2025 would end with a $49 billion trade deficit.
Here is a list of agriculture or rural-related events scheduled for this week in Washington and elsewhere (all times EDT):
Monday, June 2
4 p.m. – USDA releases Crop Progress report.
Tuesday, June 3
Field to Market annual meeting through Thursday, Kansas City.
9:30 a.m. – Monthly Purdue-CME Group Ag Economy Barometer released.
10:30 a.m. – Senate Finance Committee hearing to consider the nomination of Joseph Barloon to serve as deputy U.S. trade representative and ambassador to the World Trade Organization, 215 Dirksen.
3 p.m. – Senate Ag Committee business meeting to consider the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, 328 Russell.
4 p.m. – Senate Ag Committee hearing to consider the nomination of Michael Boren to be USDA undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment, 328 Russell.
Wednesday, June 4
World Pork Expo through Thursday, Des Moines.
Livestock Marketing Association annual convention through Saturday, Omaha.
Food as Medicine Summit through Thursday, Chicago.
10 a.m. – House Ag Committee hearing, “American Innovation and the Future of Digital Assets: From Blueprint to a Functional Framework,” 1300 Longworth.
10:15 a.m. – House Natural Resources Water, Wildlife and Fisheries subcommittee hearing, “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” 1324 Longworth.
2:15 p.m. – Senate Aging Committee hearing, “The Aging Farm Workforce: America’s Vanishing Family Farms,” 106 Dirksen.
Thursday, June 5
Mid-South Agricultural and Environmental Law Conference through Friday, Memphis.
10 a.m. – House Ag Conservation, Research and Biotechnology Subcommittee hearing, “Supporting Farmers, Strengthening Conservation, Sustaining Working Lands,” 1300 Longworth.
10:30 a.m. – House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee meeting to consider its fiscal 2026 spending bill, 2362A Rayburn.
Friday, June 6
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