House Agriculture Committee

The House Agriculture Committee pointed to spending cuts enacted as part of the 2014 farm law, and asked the Budget Committee to look to the other 98 percent of the federal budget for savings. "From our perspective, we believe the Committee on Agriculture has done its part for now with respect to deficit reduction," says a letter approved on a voice vote by committee members. The farm law called for $23 billion in savings and the committee says the savings "remain intact."

Indiana Rep. Jackie Walorksi, who chairs the House Agriculture subcommittee on nutrition, said she plans a "full-scale review" of the food stamp program. "It is intended to be a thoughtful review," she said in her first remarks about the undertaking. Walorski, who joined the Agriculture Committee this year, said the program should protect vulnerable populations of Americans while being prudent with taxpayer dollars.

At the first House Agriculture Committee hearing of the year, chairman Mike Conaway told Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, "With commodity markets plummeting and crop producers struggling to find financing, now is precisely the wrong time to weaken crop insurance." It was the latest rebuff from the farm sector of White House proposals to reduce crop insurance spending by 17 percent through a lower premium subsidy on revenue policies that insure the price at harvest time, and by adjusting payment rates for prevented-planting claims.

For many people, food stamps, the premiere U.S. anti-hunger program, provides assistance during a fairly brief stretch of hard times, such as unemployment. For millions of others - foremost, the elderly and disabled - the program is a long-term support, says a new Agriculture Department report, Dynamics and Determinants of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation from 2008 to 2012. Food stamps were renamed SNAP in 2008 but the original name remains in use.

Chairman Mike Conaway said the House Agriculture Committee will clear a Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) reauthorization bill for House debate "as early in April as we can." The starting point will be the bill that was approved, 265-144, by the House last summer, Conaway told reporters after an organizational meeting of the committee. Conaway was one of four co-sponsors of the bill, the Consumer Protection and End User Relief Act.

Two newcomers to the House Agriculture Committee, Jackie Walorski of Indiana and David Rouzer of North Carolina, will chair subcommittees in the new session of Congress, announced incoming chairman Mike Conaway of Texas. A former missionary and state legislator, Walorski, elected to her second term, will chair the Nutrition subcommittee. Rouzer, who won election to the House on Nov 4, will chair the Livestock and Foreign Agriculture subcommittee.

Texas Republican Mike Conaway, the incoming chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, said he expects "vigorous oversight" of federal programs from crop insurance and food stamps to farm subsidies and the futures markets in the new session of Congress. Conaway redrew the jurisdiction of the Agriculture subcommittees and said, "All six subcommittees will be expected to carry out vigorous oversight of their mission areas." At present, there are five subcommittees.