Congress would cut off crop subsidies to wealthy farmers and require growers to pay at least half of the cost of crop insurance premiums if it adopted the policies proposed by Donald Trump when he was president, said the Republican Study Committee in its budget outline for this fiscal year. The group, which speaks for social and fiscal conservatives in the House, said its budget “adopts many of the reforms proposed by the Trump administration to reform and streamline federal spending on agricultural programs.”
Payments from the two major crop subsidy programs, Price Loss Coverage and Agriculture Risk Coverage, would be available only to farmers with less than $500,000 a year in adjusted gross income, as proposed by Trump in 2021, said the RSC. The change “would ensure that payments are going to smaller farmers.”
At present, the government pays roughly 62 cents of each $1 in premiums for crop insurance coverage. “The RSC Budget would adopt President Trump’s proposal to modestly reduce the federal share of crop insurance premiums by 14 percent,” the outline read. The reduction would mean that farmers would pay 52 percent of the premium. The alternative budget would end USDA reimbursement of administrative expenses by crop insurers “as well as implement President Trump’s proposal to cap payments to crop insurance companies for underwriting gains,” saving a combined $27.6 billion over 10 years. The package “also supports President Trump’s 2018 budget proposal to cap the overall amount of crop insurance subsidies a single farmer may receive to $40,000” — saving $16.2 billion in a decade.
The RSC budget also would prohibit new enrollments into the Conservation Reserve, which pays landowners to take fragile land out of production, and the Conservation Stewardship Program, the nation’s first working lands program. “This mirrors proposals from President Trump to streamline conservation programs,” said the group.
The Republican Study Committee budget, “Fiscal sanity to save America,” is available here.