The House passed an $81-billion disaster relief bill that includes $3.8 billion for farmers and ranchers, with Florida expected to get a large share of that money. The Senate is likely to wait until January to vote on the bill, which creates a new cotton subsidy and opens the door to federally subsidized insurance policies that protect dairy farmers from low prices, said The Hill newspaper.
Representatives voted 251-169 for the aid bill, the third of the year to respond to hurricanes in the East and wildfires in the West. Republicans mostly voted for it and Democrats against it. The conservative group Heritage Action included “an unacceptable expansion of already excessive handouts to the cotton industry” in its list of reasons to oppose the bill.
Florida state officials and its congressional delegation angled for weeks to include agricultural aid in the disaster bill. They estimate farm losses of $2.5 billion in the state from Hurricane Irma, which swept up the Florida peninsula in early September, just as the citrus crop was nearing harvest. Provisions near the end of the 160-page bill would make seed cotton eligible for the same subsidies offered for other field crops and remove a limit of $20 million on USDA support of livestock insurance programs. Cotton and dairy farmers say the insurance-like supports created for their commodities by the 2014 farm law have flopped. The provisions of the disaster bill may have the indirect effect, under Congress’ complex budget-keeping rules, of allowing lawmakers to spend more on cotton and dairy in the 2018 farm bill.
For information on the disaster bill, HR 4667, click here.