Budget proposal discussions continue to loom over Washington this week with a possible revival of the proposal developed by the Gang of Six. This could mean good news for agriculture as the proposal, which was made public Tuesday, shows cuts to agriculture spending at $11 billion over 10 years, as opposed to the $33 billion in cuts to ag originally proposed by the Biden group. The proposal will also allow the agriculture committees to decide where those cuts will take place.
A number of agriculture groups sent a letter Tuesday to President Barack Obama, speaker of the House John Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, seeking prompt action on the debt ceiling and deficit reduction negotiations that does not require disproportionate cuts in agriculture and related programs.
Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who was part of the Gang of Six, said in an interview that the $11 billion in savings is about one-quarter of what the House proposal includes in terms of their cuts to farm programs, to conservation, and to crop insurance. “The House proposal would really cripple agriculture,” he said.
“And while you know all of us would like to keep the resources we have, I think agriculture understands full well that we’ve got to be part of the solution. Our country is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend, and that can’t continue, so all of us are going to have to contribute to savings. But no one sector should be asked to take a disproportionate share of the savings, as the House demanded of agriculture, a hugely disproportionate share of the savings coming from agriculture, and that’s not fair, that’s not right, that shouldn’t be the ultimate result here,” Conrad said.
The Gang of Six plan is a two-step process, first requiring a down payment of some $500 billion in savings government-wide. And then committees are given six months to report how they would achieve the assigned savings they are given.
Conrad explained the way the Group of Six plan is written, the committees would each get an assignment of what their savings are to be over ten years, they would come back with a plan to achieve those savings, and that would then be put in one large deficit reduction bill.
He said it would be unlikely that the whole farm bill would be put into the deficit reduction bill. Rather the savings aspects of it would be what would be included in the deficit bill.
“But it would be entirely appropriate and acceptable for the farm bill to run on a parallel track. In other words, you could have the farm bill implementing policy that also achieved the savings passed separately with the provisions that save the money as part of the deficit reduction package.
On the Senate side, there is some indication that Conrad was able to find a place in the Gang of Six budget plan for SURE, which has no budget baseline going forward at the end of 2011.
After the Gang of Six’s proposal was revealed, House Ag Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., endorsed the proposal and instructed his staff to begin researching a farm bill with the $11 billion in cuts the proposal would involve. Meanwhile, House Ag Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., said Wednesday he is watching closely which package will eventually move forward to determine timing and direction of farm policy for the 2012 Farm Bill.
Also, some Senate leaders still prefer the McConnell-Reid plan for a debt limit measure. Needless to say, debt negotiations are constantly changing, leaving every stakeholder involved only guessing what will happen from one day to the next.
Policy is one of the most important issues facing farmers today, but often the most difficult to digest. Jacqui Fatka has a passion to decode the often difficult world of agricultural policy into terms understandable for today's ag players.
Fatka joined the Farm Progress team as E-Content Editor in August 2003 after graduating from Iowa State University. Prior to full-time employment with Farm Progress, she interned at Wallaces Farmer magazine, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley's press office and the Iowa Pork Producers Association and freelanced for National Hog Farmer. She also worked as a public relations consultant with Iowa Industries for the Future, an effort to bring together major players in the biorenewables industry.
Currently Fatka is a staff editor at a sister publication, Feedstuffs. For Farm Futures she regularly tells the story of ongoing agricultural policy changes. Her byline can also be found on management profiles.
Fatka grew up on a grain and livestock farm near Atlantic, Iowa. She currently lives in central Ohio with her husband Eric.
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