WASHINGTON — In the coming weeks, the House will consider legislation that would make severe cuts in federal assistance for American farmers.
But the reductions, called for in an annual spending bill passed last week by the House Appropriations Committee, have a long way to go before becoming law. The bill is likely to be heavily amended during debate this month on the House floor. And members of the Senate and farm advocacy groups expect a far different bill to emerge from the upper chamber.
In pressing for cuts, House appropriators weighed in on policy traditionally crafted by the House Agriculture Committee, setting up a fight later this month between members of both committees, and among members of the Arkansas congressional delegation.
A key cut came in the form of an amendment, passed Tuesday on a voice vote, that would limit how much money a farmer can make and still receive federal support.
The appropriations committee’s blueprint marks ashift from previous agriculture spending bills, where cuts were made to conservation and research programs, but subsidies were considered sacrosanct, said David DeGennaro, a policy analyst at the Environmental Working Group, a Washington organization that advocates reducing farm subsidies.
“The appropriations com-mittee has never taken on domestic farm support,” he said. “It’s the first time they’ve acknowledged domestic subsidies need to be addressed.”
The bill’s passage through committee shows that the House is serious about making spending cuts, said Rep. Steve Womack, an Arkansas Republican who sits on the panel.
Womack declined to say how he voted on the income limit amendment when it passed the panel on a voice vote.
The committee’s decision “sends a message to everyone, not just farmers,that we have a crisis on our hands,” he said. “We have created a sense of dependency on taxpayers for a lot of programs.”
Rep. Rick Crawford, another Arkansas Republican, saw it differently.
He decried what he called the “slash and burn” approach taken by House appropriators.
Crawford, who represents much of the heavily agricultural eastern part of the state, is a member of the House Agriculture Committee. He said that decisions on how to shape farm policy would be best left up to that panel, which would have taken a more “fair and equitable approach.”
“It would have been better to defer to the committee of authority,” he said.
One approach the appropriations committee took to cut spending was to reduce the adjusted-gross-income limit for a farmer who receives a direct federal crop payment. Currently, the income limit is $750,000 ($1.5 million for couples) for farming income and $500,000 in off-farm income.
But under an amendment successfully offered by Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake, that amount would drop to $250,000 for an individual’s farming income.
Chuck Hassebrook, executive director of the Center for Rural Affairs, a Nebraska-based advocacy group for small farmers, said that in the current budget environment, where cuts to decades-old programs such as Medicaid and Medicare are being suggested, a full range of budget cuts must be on the table.
“It’s very tough to defend these huge payments to rich people when they’re cutting programs for the poor,” he said.
Randy Veach, president of the Arkansas Farm Bureau, warned that cutting agricultural programs too deeply would jeopardize the United States’ access to safe, domestically grown food.
“We don’t think this budget can be balanced on the backs of agriculture,” he said.
The language addressing income requirements, he said, was especially troubling for Southern growers.
Cotton and rice growers,he said, often forge growing partnerships and farm vast plots of land to create the economies of scale necessary to finance the machinery and irrigation necessary for those crops. Doing so increases their income, making it easier to bump up against the federal limit.
Crawford agreed.
He said the appropriations committee legislation was “kind of geared to a Midwestern model” that didn’t take into account the financing needs of cotton and rice farmers.
The appropriation committee’s report on the bill says it was written to reverse a “destructive spending pattern.”
“While this bill reduces funding for the agencies and programs under its jurisdiction, it provides sufficient funding for them to focus on their core missions,” it says.
During debate on the bill on Tuesday, Rep. Sam Farr of California, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture and Rural Development, said the cuts would “affect the very heart of farm country,” and leave farmers “broken.”
In total, the committee approved a budget of $125.5 billion for all agriculture programs, which include crop subsidy, loan and insurance programs, rural development, food safety, child nutrition programs, and food stamps.That’s a 13.4 percent decrease in funding compared with the current fiscal year.
The legislation would cut the budget for programs dealing directly with farmers, including crop payments, insurance and conservation, by 15 percent compared with the current fiscal year, and 26 percent compared with the program’s fiscal-2010 funding.
“I was prepared to consider a lean bill,” Farr said. “But this bill goes beyond lean.
It’sbeyond skinny. It’s downright emaciated.”
Rep. Mike Ross, a Democrat from Arkansas, said “Republican leadership has chosen to protect million-dollar subsidies for big oil corporations, while radically cutting subsidies for our farmers and farm families who work hard every day to make ends meet.”
While he said he was sympathetic with efforts among House Republicans to cut the federal budget, Sen. John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, said that farmers had already endured too many budget cuts.
“They’ve stepped forward,” he said, noting that this year’s budget deeply reduced federal agriculture spending.
Boozman, who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said if similar cuts are offered in the Senate in the coming months, “I will push back.”
Over the years, Flake has offered dozens of amendments in the committee designed to curtail government spending.
According to the Environmental Working Group’s De-Gennaro, Flake is not used to winning such votes and routinely calls for a roll-call vote to get members’ votes on the record.
But when his income limit passed, “they said ‘let’s not go for a recorded vote,’” De-Gennaro said.
Flake could not be reached for comment.
Asked how he voted on the measure, Womack responded: “That one passed by voice vote,” adding that “no member objected” to the absence of a roll-call vote.
As to whether he supports lowering income limits for farmers applying for federal payments, Womack said, “at this stage of the game, I’m not ready to opine on that, one way or the other.”
To Womack, the debate over the cuts illustrates the difficulties of making big policy shifts in a deeply splintered legislative body. He predicted that the income cap addressed by the Flake amendment would ultimately be “fleshed out” by the agriculture committee when it attempts to write new farm policy next year.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/05/2011