Six months into the pandemic, America needs a “massive response” to the coronavirus to keep the economy running, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday speaking to the National Farmers Union. “You can’t have a skinny deal,” said Pelosi, urging NFU members to tell lawmakers to pass comprehensive legislation.
“You have to have a massive problem met by a massive response to it,” she said. Speaking to NFU’s annual fall Fly-In, being held online this year, Pelosi said public sentiment was key to getting action in Congress. Asked by NFU president Rob Larew if there was a pathway out of the months-long deadlock over a new relief package, Pelosi replied, “Know your power … You’re saying ‘this is what we need.”
Congressional Democrats and the Trump administration are more than $2 trillion apart on the size of the first aid bill since March. Time is running out for agreement before the Nov. 3 election. The bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, with 50 members in the House, proposed a $1.5 trillion “March to Common Ground” framework on Tuesday in hopes of sparking negotiations.
House Agriculture chairman Collin Peterson told the NFU that an expansion of the land-idling Conservation Reserve “is probably the best and cheapest way to take care of the over-supply” of grain that is weighing on crop prices. The 2018 farm law set maximum enrollment in the reserve at 27 million acres, a 3 million-acre increase. Landowners are paid an annual rent for taking fragile land out of crop production for 10 years or longer. At present, 21.9 million acres are in the reserve.
“So we are looking at that whole program and what we could do to make it better and more affordable and whether this is something to fit into the next farm bill,” said Peterson. The 2018 farm law expires in 2023. Peterson said field hearings on the new farm bill might begin in late 2021 or in 2022.
The Problem Solvers framework calls for a 15 percent SNAP “plus up” through July 2021 at a cost $10 billion, a 15 percent WIC “plus up” through March 2021 at a cost of $1 billion, and $25 billion “for agriculture and aquaculture producers and processors.” It also proposed robust enforcement of worker safety rules, coupled with “enhanced protections for entities which follow enhanced OSHA guidelines.”
All sides agree on additional aid to agriculture. The administration has repeatedly blocked higher SNAP benefits during the pandemic.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell included $20 billion for aid to agriculture in a so-called skinny bill that was defeated last week.
The Democratic-run House passed a $3.2 trillion coronavirus bill in May that included $10 billion to cover increased food-stamp participation, $1.1 billion for additional costs in WIC, $3 billion for child nutrition programs, and a temporary 15 percent increase in SNAP benefits. It also called for $16.5 billion for direct payments to agricultural producers, $2.5 billion in aid to biofuel producers, payments to poultry and livestock producers who had to kill animals because of coronavirus disruptions at processing plants, and a three-year initiative, costing $1 billion, to plant cover crops on 5 million acres in the “prairie pothole” region of the northern Plains and Midwest.