After a successful test vote on Tuesday, the Senate was expected to easily approve on Wednesday a funding bill to keep the government open through Dec. 11. Provisions of the bill would expand child nutrition funding by nearly $8 billion, including a one-year extension of the so-called P-EBT program, and allow a financial replenishment of the USDA agency that can spend up to $30 billion at a time on agricultural subsidies.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would meet Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Wednesday for further negotiations over coronavirus legislation providing up to $2.2 trillion in assistance. That package would include a temporary 15 percent increase in SNAP benefits and more than $3.2 billion in aid to the farm sector, if Democrats have their way. Biofuel producers and cotton mills would become eligible for coronavirus relief for the first time under the proposed bill.
Senators voted, 82 to 6, to end debate on the short-term funding bill, HR 8337, in a roll call that served as a gauge of support for the legislation and opened the door to an expected vote on Wednesday, the final day of the fiscal year and the deadline to prevent a federal shutdown.
The House passed the funding bill, 359 to 57, a week ago. New York Rep. Nita Lowey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said it “includes nearly $8 billion in desperately needed nutrition assistance for struggling Americans.” The Pandemic EBT program, which helps low-income parents buy food for children who miss free or reduced-price school meals because of closures, would be extended through Sept. 30, 2021, and expanded to include child care centers affected by Covid-19 closures and reduced hours.
Also in the funding bill was language barring USDA from providing payments or other supports to oil refiners and importers. It would be the book-end to the provision in the House Democrat’s coronavirus bill allowing USDA aid to ethanol plants. At one point, the administration floated the idea of payments, drawn from USDA, to refiners who were denied exceptions from the federal mandate to mix ethanol into the gasoline supply.
Farm-state lawmakers fought for inclusion in the funding bill of the replenishment of “USDA’s bank,” the Commodity Credit Corp, because of heavy spending on trade-war and coronavirus relief. Farm subsidies are forecast to be a record $32 billion, or more, this year. Direct farm payments, which include traditional crop subsidies and land stewardship programs, run from $10 billion to $15 billion a year. The Trump administration has spent $33 billion in stopgap aid to farmers since 2018 and opened a $14 billion round of coronavirus aid this month.
Pelosi and Mnuchin met on Tuesday to discuss the latest coronavirus package offered by House Democrats. The White House repeatedly has blocked expansion of SNAP benefits. The Democratic bill provided $1.25 billion to assist contract growers of livestock and poultry who lost money due to the pandemic, $500 million for dairy donations to charity, $500 million for loans to dairy processors, $500 million for specialty crop growers and $350 million for farmers markets and local food production.
It also authorizes payments to producers who had to cull livestock and poultry because of processing plant slowdowns with an accompanying change in USDA authority to compensate producers for removal and disposal of livestock due to supply chain disruptions. Packer-owned livestock would not be eligible for payments.
The bill also would require the USDA to give advance notice to the House and Senate Agriculture committees of any expenditures of funding provided by the latest coronavirus bill. Some lawmakers have complained the administration has circumvented Congress by using the CCC to pay for programs that it creates on its own.
A summary of the short-term funding bill is available here.
To read a summary of USDA provisions in the House coronavirus bill, click here.