The Republican-written House farm bill is $33 billion over budget and fails to pay for its large increase in crop subsidies, said congressional scorekeepers in an official cost estimate. House Agriculture chairman Glenn Thompson, who brushed aside earlier warnings about over-spending, said if the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office won’t change its mind, he would rely on the House Budget Committee to overrule the CBO.
Lawmakers are 10 months late in enacting a successor to the 2018 farm policy law due to a stalemate over food stamp cuts, larger farm spending, and climate mitigation funding. The CBO cost estimate, released on Friday, created a potential obstacle to the legislation. The House bill would increase commodity supports by $45 billion over 10 years, while cutting SNAP by $29 billion and greatly restricting USDA use of a reserve fund.
Thompson said repeatedly the proposed limitations on the $30 billion USDA reserve would save more than enough money to offset the expense of increasing by 15 percent the so-called reference prices that trigger crop subsidy payments, allowing larger payments per farmer, and making more land eligible for subsidies. The House Agriculture Committee approved Thompson’s bill on May 24 despite unofficial CBO estimates of high costs. In its formal “score,” the CBO said the limits on the USDA fund would save $3.6 billion over 10 years, not the $64-$73 billion that Thompson claimed.
“Today’s score from CBO shows once again that the House Republican proposal is not paid for and relies on magic math and wishful thinking,” said Senate Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow. Georgia Rep. David Scott, the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said, “It’s time to stop complaining about CBO … Republicans can choose to keep pushing a bill that has no future or to work with Democrats to get a farm bill signed into law this year.”
For his part, Thompson said the CBO estimate “shows me that there is still more work to make certain that the bill … can be brought across the finish line.”
“I will continue to work with the Budget Committee and CBO to bring about a clear-eyed, defensible interpretation of restricting Section 5 discretionary authority,” said Thompson, referring to the USDA fund, held by a Depression-era entity known as the Commodity Credit Corp.
Thompson says the extraordinary sums spent during the Trump era on trade war and pandemic relief — a combined $46.5 billion — ought to be considered by the CBO as run-of-the-mill outlays when it projects spending in the future. In a release, Republican staff workers on the House Agriculture Committee said there were “clear indications from both political parties of the intent to fully maximize spending” from the USDA reserve, so the CBO estimate “does not match reality.”
It will be September at the earliest before the House votes on its farm bill. The top priority in the House is passage of the annual appropriations bills to fund the government in the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1. The Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to vote on a five-year farm bill; its Democratic and Republican leaders have presented outlines for the farm bill but not legislation itself.
A one-year extension of the 2018 farm law expires on Sept. 30. At some point in the fall, lawmakers will decide whether to extend current law.
To read the CBO score of H.R. 8467, the House farm bill, click here.