Articles by Sara Wyant

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 – It’s Christmas time in Washington and the city is brimming with beautiful lights, holiday parties, pledges of good cheer and a substantial “to do” list before lawmakers finally decide to call it a wrap for the year.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 1633, the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act of 2011, by 268-150.

Lawmakers want to hear Jon Corzine, a former U.S. senator from New Jersey and governor of that state, explain what happened with billions of dollars lost in the collapse of MF Global Holdings Ltd., the eighth largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA) announced today that it will go ahead with the first phase of plans to update the methodology used to set crop insurance premiums, leading to lower insurance premium rates for many corn and soybean producers in the 2012 crop year and potentially other crops in th

As lawmakers return this week from the Thanksgiving break, they face a host of issues including whether or not to extend several tax breaks and how to gain approval for nine more appropriations bills before the current stop-gap spending measure expires on December 16.

Various super committee packages have been advanced, but partisan bickering over the level of spending cuts and tax increases continues to stand in the way of reaching any compromise.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., held separate briefings for members in an attempt to bring them up to date on the status of deliberations to cut $23 billion out of farm bill spending over the next decade.

With just 10 days left to produce a $1.2 trillion package aimed at deficit reduction, the 12 members of the Joint Deficit Reduction Committee are providing only small hints that they may be moving closer to their end game.