Ag Policy Blog
Conservatives Want to Split Farm Bill
Dow Jones reported Wednesday that the chairman of the Republican Study Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, said conservatives would seek to split the farm bill into two pieces of legislation if it is brought to the floor for debate.
The RSC has championed Rep. Paul Ryan's approach of more significant cuts to nutrition programs and converting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program into a block grant for states. That concept was rejected by the House Agriculture Committee, as were steeper cuts for nutrition pushed by Ryan's budget proposal earlier this year. Ryan wanted about $130 billion in nutrition cuts. The House Ag Committee approved $16 billion.
The conservative study group's comments on issues such as the farm bill and taxes reflect that wing of the GOP in the House remains unwilling to compromise with the administration or Senate Democrats on taxes or spending issues.
Splitting the farm bill would make it easier for conservative lawmakers to pass the sections of legislation that directly deal with farmers such as the commodity title, conservation and crop insurance. But such a move would also split the rural-urban coalition of farm groups and nutrition groups that have generally worked together to get a farm bill approved in the past.
It's unclear what direction House leadership wants to go with the farm bill. House Ag Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., also has not spoken about the legislation or his desires for the legislation since the election.
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House Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., is expected to be interviewed on the radio show Agritalk today.
Ag Scientists Speak Out on Research Funding
In a news release issued Thursday morning, the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), Crop Science Society of America (CSSA), Soil Science Society of America (SSSA), the American Society of Plant Biologists, and the National Association of Plant Breeders urged lawmakers to act to avoid the crippling budget cuts known as “sequestration” by delivering to Congress a petition signed by more than 1350 of their member scientists and others in the research and agricultural communities.
Sequestration would reduce nondefense discretionary spending by about 8.2% beginning in January 2013. These cuts would severely impact scientific research, as most federal funding for such endeavors (from agencies such as the USDA, U.S. Geological Survey, and National Science Foundation) are part of discretionary spending budgets.
“The potential impacts of sequestration for science funding are huge,” says Chuck Rice, past president of SSSA. “It’s also going to hurt the capacity of our country to train students and be more competitive in the future. It has long-lasting effects.”
The cuts, included in the Budget Control Act of 2011, were meant to act as a motivating contingency for achieving a comprehensive deficit reduction. The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction was to draw up a plan to reduce the deficit by November 2011 to avoid the massive reductions ordered under sequestration. When the committee failed, the contingency was put in place. Unless Congress can agree on a comprehensive deficit reduction plan in the coming months, sequestration will go into effect in January—something the ASA, CSSA, and SSSA are calling on Congress to avoid at all costs.
“If a bipartisan agreement on the budget cannot be reached, the sequestration plan currently in place will devastate our country’s research capacity and the long-term competitiveness of the US in the global economy,” says CSSA President Jeff Volenec. “Time and time again analyses have revealed that investments in research and education have a multiplier effect.”
The petition is one of several efforts by the Societies’ members to motivate Congress. Members were also invited to sign a letter and participate in a “tweet day” earlier this year, and a website containing additional resources on sequestration is hosted by the Societies’ policy office. Through these efforts, the Societies are using multiple avenues to convince lawmakers that sequestration would affect all aspects of the agriculture community and that a deficit reduction plan is greatly needed.
“The sequestration petition is an excellent way to show broad support for science funding and to illustrate the negative impacts of non-strategic cuts to that funding,” says SSSA President Gary Pierzynski. “From an agricultural perspective, we are faced with the possibility of cuts at a time when the need for agricultural productivity is growing exponentially.”
I can be found on Twitter @ChrisClaytonDTN.
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