Farm lobbyists are working with a select group of lawmakers to draw up a new subsidy plan for growers that could sidestep the normal debates in Congress.
The idea is to get the measure included in a broader deficit-reduction plan that a congressional super committee is charged with putting together by Thanksgiving.
Leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees have until the end of the month to draft their plan, which would cut spending by $23 billion over the next decade while providing grain and cotton growers with a new method of protecting their incomes against drops in commodity prices as well as storms or drought.
The new farm bill would be protected from changes on the House and Senate floor if it’s included in the super committee’s deficit-reduction plan. Under special rules for the super committee, its plan will be put to a simple yes-or-no vote in the House and Senate. No amendments will be allowed, so if a farm bill is included it can’t be changed.
That’s OK with farm groups and their allies in Congress, who don’t want to worry about attempts by urban lawmakers to cut the new subsidies or put strings on them. But critics of farm programs say the secretive, hurry-up process in which the bill is being developed is shutting out groups that think subsidies are aimed at the wrong kinds of foods or encourage intensive farming practices that are bad for the environment.
“Given the amount of money involved, and given the implications of the farm bill for our food and the quality of our environment, there’s a lot of folks in Congress that ought to have a voice in where this ends up other than the agriculture committees,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group.
Farm bills usually take many months to write, and sometimes go through multiple floor battles in the Senate and House, before negotiators from the two chambers can agree on the final version.
Farm groups know cuts in subsidies are coming, and they’re eager to ensure that growers get a share of the money that’s left.
“This is such an unusual process and an unpredictable one,” said Mark Maslyn, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest farm organization. “You just hope at the end of it that good policy comes out of it that provides a meaningful safety net” for farmers.
While some groups complain that they are in the dark about what the committees are doing, Maslyn said discussions between his staff of lobbyists and agriculture committee aides have been “free-flowing and open.”
Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, has been giving feedback to the committee aides on draft bill language while pushing for inclusion of his group’s ideas on issues such as rural development and conservation. “We’re neutral on the process until we see the product,” he said.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack plans to talk about the Obama administration’s priorities in an appearance Monday at the Deere and Co. factory at Ankeny, which makes cotton harvesters and other farm equipment. The administration has proposed $33 billion in cuts, $10 billion more than the agriculture committees want.
Most of the $23 billion cut, an amount in the range of $15 billion, would come in commodity programs, with the rest coming out of conservation and nutrition programs, according to Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, the ranking Republican on the Senate agriculture committee. The cut in commodity programs would amount to about 20 percent. Conservation programs could be trimmed by about 10 percent, or $6.5 billion.
“The process is certainly unique and unprecedented, and it’s very difficult,” Roberts said in an interview.
He said that by proposing $23 billion in cuts and drafting the farm bill that makes the reductions, the leaders of the agriculture committees are trying to prevent the deficit panel from making “a meat-ax cut that could be very detrimental.”
The other lawmakers leading the talks include the Senate committee’s chairwoman, Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Frank Lucas, R-Okla.; and the House panel’s senior Democrat, Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
The National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association are urging agriculture committee leaders to scrap the current system of fixed direct payments that farmers receive in favor of a program that would pay farmers for a portion of their losses in revenue not covered by traditional crop insurance.
“There seems to be some increased momentum” for linking subsidies to farm revenue, said Sam Willett, a lobbyist for the National Corn Growers Association. But he said that he had seen nothing in writing yet from the agriculture committees.
Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, introduced a bill that would trigger payments to farmers when revenue for the crops falls below area-wide targets.
But some critics say it’s unfair to expect taxpayers to subsidize both crop insurance and a program to cover losses the insurance doesn’t. That’s akin to paying for both the insurance and the farmers’ deductible, the critics say. And even farm groups aren’t united on the idea: The Farm Bureau says that subsidizing uninsured losses will encourage farmers to take excessive risks, such as planting crops in marginal areas. The Farm Bureau offered its own plan on Friday — a low-cost form of insurance that would replace a popular policy that farmers now buy.
Another issue to be resolved is whether there would be limits on the amount of money large farms could collect under a new program. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D., wrote super committee leaders urging them to ensure that any farm bill they include in their plan include caps on crop subsidies, estimating the limits could save $1.5 billion.
Such caps “will help us target farm payments to those who really need them, the small- and medium-sized farmers who need a safety net to help them get through rough patches,” the senators wrote.
There’s no guarantee that the super committee will accept the agriculture committee leaders’ ideas, or hold cuts to $23 billion, or even that the super committee will agree on an overall plan to reduce the deficit. The panel’s goal is to propose at least $1.5 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period, but Democrats and Republicans have been split so far over whether tax revenue should be included.
But existing farm programs are due to expire in 2012. So even if the super committee does fail to enact a plan, lawmakers are likely to pick up the farm bill now being drafted and move forward with the ideas in a different form, said the Farm Bureau’s Maslyn.
The idea is to get the measure included in a broader deficit-reduction plan that a congressional super committee is charged with putting together by Thanksgiving.
Leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees have until the end of the month to draft their plan, which would cut spending by $23 billion over the next decade while providing grain and cotton growers with a new method of protecting their incomes against drops in commodity prices as well as storms or drought.
The new farm bill would be protected from changes on the House and Senate floor if it’s included in the super committee’s deficit-reduction plan. Under special rules for the super committee, its plan will be put to a simple yes-or-no vote in the House and Senate. No amendments will be allowed, so if a farm bill is included it can’t be changed.
That’s OK with farm groups and their allies in Congress, who don’t want to worry about attempts by urban lawmakers to cut the new subsidies or put strings on them. But critics of farm programs say the secretive, hurry-up process in which the bill is being developed is shutting out groups that think subsidies are aimed at the wrong kinds of foods or encourage intensive farming practices that are bad for the environment.
“Given the amount of money involved, and given the implications of the farm bill for our food and the quality of our environment, there’s a lot of folks in Congress that ought to have a voice in where this ends up other than the agriculture committees,” said Craig Cox, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group.
Farm bills usually take many months to write, and sometimes go through multiple floor battles in the Senate and House, before negotiators from the two chambers can agree on the final version.
Farm groups know cuts in subsidies are coming, and they’re eager to ensure that growers get a share of the money that’s left.
“This is such an unusual process and an unpredictable one,” said Mark Maslyn, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest farm organization. “You just hope at the end of it that good policy comes out of it that provides a meaningful safety net” for farmers.
While some groups complain that they are in the dark about what the committees are doing, Maslyn said discussions between his staff of lobbyists and agriculture committee aides have been “free-flowing and open.”
Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, has been giving feedback to the committee aides on draft bill language while pushing for inclusion of his group’s ideas on issues such as rural development and conservation. “We’re neutral on the process until we see the product,” he said.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack plans to talk about the Obama administration’s priorities in an appearance Monday at the Deere and Co. factory at Ankeny, which makes cotton harvesters and other farm equipment. The administration has proposed $33 billion in cuts, $10 billion more than the agriculture committees want.
Most of the $23 billion cut, an amount in the range of $15 billion, would come in commodity programs, with the rest coming out of conservation and nutrition programs, according to Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, the ranking Republican on the Senate agriculture committee. The cut in commodity programs would amount to about 20 percent. Conservation programs could be trimmed by about 10 percent, or $6.5 billion.
“The process is certainly unique and unprecedented, and it’s very difficult,” Roberts said in an interview.
He said that by proposing $23 billion in cuts and drafting the farm bill that makes the reductions, the leaders of the agriculture committees are trying to prevent the deficit panel from making “a meat-ax cut that could be very detrimental.”
The other lawmakers leading the talks include the Senate committee’s chairwoman, Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Frank Lucas, R-Okla.; and the House panel’s senior Democrat, Collin Peterson of Minnesota.
The National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association are urging agriculture committee leaders to scrap the current system of fixed direct payments that farmers receive in favor of a program that would pay farmers for a portion of their losses in revenue not covered by traditional crop insurance.
“There seems to be some increased momentum” for linking subsidies to farm revenue, said Sam Willett, a lobbyist for the National Corn Growers Association. But he said that he had seen nothing in writing yet from the agriculture committees.
Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, introduced a bill that would trigger payments to farmers when revenue for the crops falls below area-wide targets.
But some critics say it’s unfair to expect taxpayers to subsidize both crop insurance and a program to cover losses the insurance doesn’t. That’s akin to paying for both the insurance and the farmers’ deductible, the critics say. And even farm groups aren’t united on the idea: The Farm Bureau says that subsidizing uninsured losses will encourage farmers to take excessive risks, such as planting crops in marginal areas. The Farm Bureau offered its own plan on Friday — a low-cost form of insurance that would replace a popular policy that farmers now buy.
Another issue to be resolved is whether there would be limits on the amount of money large farms could collect under a new program. Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D., wrote super committee leaders urging them to ensure that any farm bill they include in their plan include caps on crop subsidies, estimating the limits could save $1.5 billion.
Such caps “will help us target farm payments to those who really need them, the small- and medium-sized farmers who need a safety net to help them get through rough patches,” the senators wrote.
There’s no guarantee that the super committee will accept the agriculture committee leaders’ ideas, or hold cuts to $23 billion, or even that the super committee will agree on an overall plan to reduce the deficit. The panel’s goal is to propose at least $1.5 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period, but Democrats and Republicans have been split so far over whether tax revenue should be included.
But existing farm programs are due to expire in 2012. So even if the super committee does fail to enact a plan, lawmakers are likely to pick up the farm bill now being drafted and move forward with the ideas in a different form, said the Farm Bureau’s Maslyn.
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