During a sometimes prickly House hearing on Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack urged lawmakers to buckle down and write a farm bill that does not cut SNAP or climate funds. Republicans on the House Agriculture Committee said the Biden administration has overlooked the needs of the large-scale farmers who produce the bulk of U.S. crops and livestock.
“The bottom line is, we need to get [the farm bill] done,” said Vilsack. “Failure to have a farm bill creates uncertainty” on the farm and in areas beyond the fence line, including ag research, rural development, export promotion, and public nutrition, he said.
Action on the farm bill, already four months overdue, is deadlocked over higher crop subsidies, climate funding, and SNAP spending. Neither the House nor the Senate Agriculture Committee has released a first-round draft of the bill.
“We all need to be working as a team,” said Agriculture Committee chair Glenn Thompson at the end of the five-hour hearing. He also said Democrats were unwilling to discuss funding levels for the farm bill, budget analysts were slow in providing cost estimates, and the administration “demonizes farmers … if they do not subscribe to a far-left climate agenda.”
“I have not given up on March,” he told reporters afterward, referring to his goal of House passage of a bipartisan farm bill in March. “A lot of things [are] out of my control.” The chair said another extension of the 2018 farm law, which expired last Sept. 30, was possible.
Thompson said he had picked up an idea from Vilsack on how to pay for the farm bill — to claim $2 billion or $3 billion in leftover cash each year from the USDA reserve that funds conversation payments and commodity subsidies. Vilsack has repeatedly suggested, but with little detail, that the reserve fund could be given a role in the farm bill. Asked by reporters about the prospects of a farm bill this year, Vilsack said, “I think if folks become creative, 100 percent.”
Republicans on the committee blamed the administration for the agricultural trade deficit, high production costs, a downturn in farm income, high pay rates for guestworkers, and burdensome regulations on pesticides and wetlands. Vilsack, they said, was too enamored of climate-smart farming and overly focused on small and medium-size farmers.
Georgia Rep. Austin Scott decried SNAP’s growing share of farm bill spending and suggested farmers were shortchanged by it. Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas said large operators did not get the share they deserved of a recent disaster program. “In my view, the federal government should either support producers or get out of the way,” said Rep. Tracey Mann of Kansas.
Illinois Republican Mary Miller said farmers would face a 34 percent increase in expenses because of Biden efforts to slow global warming. “The majority of farmers are not on board with [this] climate cult agenda,” she said. “You are forcing farmers into this.”
The USDA’s climate programs are voluntary, incentive-based, and market-driven, responded Vilsack. “You should study up on this.”
When Rep. Randy Feenstra, an Iowa Republican, complained that the administration has not produced new free trade agreements, Vilsack said that congressional sentiment has turned protectionist: “Can you pass TPA [Trade Promotion Authority] in this Congress? Why not?” TPA laws define U.S. goals in negotiations, lay out consultation requirements, and assure an up or down vote on agreements with no amendments.
California’s Proposition 12 law could create chaos in the pork marketing sector, said Vilsack. “I’m not sure this Congress is going to be able to pass legislation, with all respect,” he said, to delineate state and federal powers.
To watch a video of the hearing or to read Vilsack’s written testimony, click here.