Most of the Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee — 21 of 29 — support “pretty radical” farm bill proposals at a time when only a bipartisan bill is sure of enactment, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Monday. “It just underscores the difficulty of getting to a farm bill” when control of Congress is almost evenly divided, he said.
Speaking to the North American Agricultural Journalists, Vilsack tied Republicans on the Agriculture Committee to farm policy proposals from the Republican Study Committee, which speaks for social and fiscal conservatives in the House. Many of its agriculture proposals are modeled on Trump-era initiatives. Agriculture chairman Glenn Thompson is not an RSC member, but 21 of 29 committee Republicans are, he said.
The proposals include shutting off crop subsidies to farmers with more than $500,000 a year in adjusted gross income, requiring growers to pay a larger share of the premium for subsidized crop insurance, and ending enrollment in the two largest USDA land stewardship programs, the Conservation Reserve and the Conservation Stewardship Program.
Vilsack also suggested that the Women, Infants, and Children program should be converted to mandatory funding, the same as SNAP, and said biosecurity practices on the farm were reducing the impact of bird flu outbreaks that began more than two years ago. WIC was the center of a funding fight earlier this year because of an unexpected increase in enrollment and food prices. Since late March, the H5N1 bird flu virus has been found in 29 dairy herds in eight widely dispersed states.
Congress is six months late in delivering a successor to the 2018 farm law that expired on Sept. 30, 2023. Leaders of the Senate and House Agriculture committees are at an impasse over crop subsidies, climate funding, and SNAP outlays.
A bipartisan majority will be needed for the farm bill because Republicans are unlikely to pass the legislation on their own, said Vilsack. At the moment, Republicans have a 218-213 margin over Democrats in the House but hard-line conservatives have repeatedly voted against bills backed by GOP leaders. Democrats have the edge, 51-49, in the Senate but 60 votes are needed to avoid a filibuster.
Farm groups have given priority to an increase in reference prices, the trigger points for crop subsidy payments, and expansion of the crop insurance program. There is no additional funding available for farm supports, however. Vilsack said a $30 billion USDA reserve, known as the Commodity Credit Corp., could be tapped. “My suggestion is to essentially look at…creating within CCC programs which would essentially result in increased investment [in] farmers and rural America.”
In contrast, he said the “pretty radical” RSC recommendations would result in “a pretty significant retreat” in USDA spending on agriculture programs. “It’s going to be interesting to see how it’s playing with members of the House,” he said.
Separately, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall told The Hagstrom Report that farmers would get a better deal if passage of the farm bill is delayed until 2025 and Republicans are in the majority in the Senate and Donald Trump is president.