The Agriculture Department would lose more than 5 percent of its workforce under President Trump’s proposals to slash crop insurance and food stamps, to down-size conservation programs and to eliminate many rural development programs, said USDA officials. “There’s no sugarcoating what we will face,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
“USDA will likely see a significant reduction in funding by the time this process is complete,” said Perdue during a news conference and in a video message to employees. “This should be no surprise to anyone,” said Perdue, given Trump’s promises to shake up the federal government.
In its proposed budget for fiscal 2018, which opens on Oct. 1, the White House called for $6 billion in cuts over 10 years for conservation programs, $28 billion in cuts in federally subsidized crop insurance, and $194 billion in cuts in food stamps by restricting eligibility and by requiring states to pay 25 percent of benefits.
The reaction was swift. Farm Bureau president Zippy Duvall said the White House plan “fails agriculture and rural America.” NFU president Roger Johnson called the package “an assault” on the farm safety net. The Republican chairmen of the Senate and House Agriculture committees said “we will fight to ensure that farmers have a strong safety net” in the budget and in the 2018 farm bill but they were open to seeing if public nutrition programs “are helping the most vulnerable in our society.” Massachusetts Rep Jim McGovern, a congressional leader against hunger, said the Trump budget was cruel and cold-hearted with its proposals to cut nutrition assistance.
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Senate Agriculture Committee member, reminded reporters that Congress controls the purse strings. “The president proposes,” he said, “and Congress disposes.”
The cuts would tilt USDA’s conservation programs toward land retirement and away from soil, water and wildlife stewardship on “working” lands. They would bar new enrollment in the Conservation Stewardship Program and terminate the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, created in the 2014 farm law. The budget also would target enrollment in the land-idling Conservation Reserve on grasslands and so-called continuous practices such as wind breaks and buffer strips along waterways. With the reserve at its 25 million-acre ceiling, there would be no open-to-everyone sign-up through 2020.
For food stamps, the cuts would be nearly five times larger than proposed by conservative House Republicans during debate on the 2014 farm law. The administration said it would reduce access to benefits in two major ways; by restricting so-called categorical eligibility and by limiting benefits to able-bodies adults without dependents (ABAWDs) in all but the worst economic downturns. Those steps would save $50 billion. The state cost-share would save $116 billion. Other cuts could generate the rest of the savings. Among them, the minimum benefit of $15 a month would be abolished and benefits to households could not exceed the level for six people, no matter how large a household is.
Categorical eligibility was created during welfare reform of the 1990s to reduce paperwork and administrative costs. It allows states to say that someone who qualifies for social assistance because of low income also is eligible for food stamps even if they have larger assets than usually permitted. The White House proposed that food stamps benefits would be available only to people who receive a welfare payment.
As present, ABAWDs are limited to three months of food stamp benefits in a three-year period except during periods of high unemployment. The administration would allow states to waive the three-month rule only when counties have an annual unemployment rate exceeding 10 percent.
At a House Agriculture Committee hearing last week, Perdue described food stamps as “a very effective, important program” and in response to questions from McGovern, said, “As far as I’m concerned, we have no proposed changes. You don’t try to fix things that aren’t broken.”
During a teleconference, USDA budget officer Mike Young did not respond directly to questions about whether Perdue gave lawmakers a misleading signal. The USDA budget package assumes full funding for the program, said Young, a career civil servant. “There are separate legislative proposals,” he said, that will ask Congress for the cuts.
Perdue spoke during the opening moments of the teleconference and left before the question period began.
Crop insurance would see the largest cuts among agricultural programs – $16.2 billion over 10 years by limiting USDA’s share of crop insurance premiums to $40,000 a year per person and $11.9 billion through elimination of premium subsidies for revenue policies with the so-called harvest price option, which pays growers for losses at the harvest price it it’s higher than the price that was guaranteed when the policy was purchased. The budget proposal for the fiscal year opening on Oct. 1 also would deny premium subsidies to people with more than $500,000 a year in adjusted gross income.
Farm groups routinely put a strong crop insurance program, the mainstay of the farm safety net at nearly $8 billion a year, at the top of their list of priorities. They join the crop insurance industry in describing crop insurance as a public-private partnership with growers bearing part of the cost of the program. The government pays 62 cents of each $1 in premiums and absorbs a large part of the costs when disaster strikes.
“Destructive cuts to crop insurance have been proposed by past administrations and soundly rejected by congressional leaders, said six crop insurance trade groups in a joint statement. “We fully expect that to be the case again this year, and we are hopeful to engage in meaningful dialogue about how to support America’s hardworking farmers and ranchers in difficult times like these.”