2012 Farm Bill Timing
In late 2011, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (see archived timeline below) failed to submit deficit reduction recommendations to Congress, as directed by the Budget Control Act of 2011. As part of that process, the House and Senate Agriculture Committees wrote a draft farm bill that they had hoped the Supercommittee would include in its recommendations. That draft farm bill would have included $23 billion in cuts. Read our previous blog post for a full description of the cuts, improvements, and other changes included in the draft bill.
Both the House and Senate Agriculture Committees have been holding farm bill hearings, and both Committees are pushing to mark up a farm bill by September 30, the end of the fiscal year. The two committees are using the Supercommittee bill as a starting point moving forward.
Complicating this process is a requirement for budget reconciliation in the House. The House Agriculture Committee is required to produce $33 billion in cuts to the spending that falls within its jurisdiction (most of which is the farm bill) by April 27. It remains to be seen what programs the Committee will cut in its reconciliation bill, and how it will handle the development of a farm bill later this spring and summer having just passed a reconciliation bill.
If the House and Senate Agriculture Committees both pass a farm bill before September 30, 2012, the two versions will need to pass through each chamber and be reconciled in conference before a bill can be sent to the President. If they do not pass a farm bill, they will likely pass a one-year extension of the 2008 Farm Bill.
Archived Timeline
Posted September 2011- While Congress generally reauthorizes the farm bill every five years or so and is scheduled to do so in 2012, whether it does so in 2012 or waits until 2013 depends in part on the actions of a special congressional deficit reduction committee that Congress created in August 2011.
The deficit reduction deal reached in early August created a special congressional committee — officially known as the Joint Selection Committee on Deficit Reduction — made up of six Democrats (three House, three Senate) and six Republicans (three House, three Senate). The Committee is tasked with coming up with a package of at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and revenue increases before Thanksgiving 2011, with an up or down (no amendments) vote by the full House and Senate by no later than December 23.
The 12-member special committee may well decide whether farm bill programs are cut and if so by how much. They could decide to go with an $11 billion cut, like that proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in July, or the $48 billion cut proposed in the House-passed budget resolution from earlier this year, or any other number.
The special committee also has the ability to shape the fate of the 37 farm bill programs that have no baseline funding after fiscal year 2012. These include the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) along with important newer programs for beginning farmers, organic agriculture, renewable energy, direct marketing, and specialty crop research. Together, these programs account for roughly $4 billion dollars, or 1.5 percent of the $283 billion five-year total cost of the 2008 farm bill.
The special committee’s decisions could significantly change the farm bill funding landscape – by reducing or eliminating commodity program direct payments or re-funding the permanent disaster program or reducing the size of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), for example. The special committee could also decide that valuable programs like the WRP or Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, Farmers Market Promotion Program, Organic Research and Extension Initiative, or Rural Micro-entrepreneur Assistance Program should be funded as part of the budget control bill, with sufficient cuts elsewhere in the federal budget to achieve the required net savings.
A failure by the committee or Congress to reach an agreement on at least $1.2 trillion in cuts would trigger automatic cuts through a process called “sequestration.” The cuts would be equally divided between security and non-security spending and include both discretionary and mandatory spending. It would include farm bill spending, though SNAP (food stamps) and other nutrition programs as well as the Conservation Reserve Program would be exempt from cuts. Though the White House has not publicly released the figures, it is expected that the farm bill cuts from sequestration would be in the neighborhood of $15 billion.
Both the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the House Agriculture Committee have stated that any recommendation by the special committee to significantly cut agricultural spending would require a swift response in the form of an expedited farm bill process. The Ranking Member has said that the same would hold true in the event of sequestration.
Under the terms of the deal, the House and Senate Agriculture Committees have the option of recommending cuts to programs under their jurisdiction to the special committee by October 14. While many behind-the-scenes discussions will no doubt occur between Agriculture Committee leaders and members of the special committee, it is unlikely that the Agriculture Committees, or any other Committee for that matter, will volunteer deep, long-term cuts to their programs. The Agriculture Committees will also have a chance after the special committee issues its proposed bill and before floor votes in the House and Senate to recommend whether or not to pass the bill.
Given that most cuts to mandatory spending programs will be decided by the special committee later this year, the House and Senate Agriculture Committees will very likely delay any mark ups on the next farm bill until they have a clear picture of what will be available for farm bill programs moving forward.
If the special committee deals extensively with farm bill spending, it is possible the Agriculture Committees would then move quickly to wrap up the rest of the farm bill. Passage of a government-wide deficit reduction bill, however, could have the opposite effect of postponing consideration of the farm bill until 2013. On the other hand, if the special committee process fails and the automatic sequestration process kicks in instead, there may be a greater likelihood of the farm bill debate proceeding as planned in 2012. Time will tell.
NSAC issued a letter to the special committee as well as farm bill budget recommendations on September 20. We will monitor the progress of the committee very closely, and update this page whenever anything more definitive can be said about farm bill timing.