House Republicans' farm bill proposal 'robs Peter to pay Paul,' Agriculture secretary says

The House Agriculture committee is trying to fund its farm bill proposals with “counterfeit money,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters Wednesday morning.

Vilsack spoke after a range of groups from across the political spectrum criticized House Republicans’ proposed farm bill, which seeks to direct tens of billions to subsidies for farmers of peanuts, rice and cotton.

House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) told reporters these increases — which he said were necessary to make up for rising costs of inputs like fuel and fertilizer — would be paid for by freezing increases to food aid, and by cuts to the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC), which allows administrations to make emergency loans.

But Vilsack noted that the Congressional Budget Office has found these cuts — which are deeply unpopular among Democrats — fall well short of what is needed to pay for Thompson’s proposed increases.

Thompson’s camp disputes these findings, and The Hill has reached out for further clarification.

The House, Vilsack said, “doesn’t have the resources, if they follow the rules, to be able to do everything that they're doing.”

“You can’t rob Peter to pay Paul,” he added.

The House bill, unveiled by Thompson last week, would increase the “reference prices” for cotton, peanuts and rice. Analysis from the Environmental Working Group  suggests those changes would lead to farmers of those commodities getting paid out over the next five years no matter what.

That plus proposed increases to crop insurance could cost between $50 billion and $100 billion — though the Congressional Budget Office doesn’t yet have firm numbers, and may not have them before the current farm bill expires.

That price tag poses a serious challenge for the House because Congress has said this farm bill must be “budget neutral,” meaning additions in one area must be balanced by cuts in another.

The trouble, Vilsack argued, was that the “creative math” in the House Agriculture Committee's bill doesn’t work. He compared the plan to a parent who “at Christmas time you go out and buy all the gifts on credit. And then the bill come due in January and then you'd have to really tighten the belt and you have to make serious sacrifices, which nobody likes.”

In the upper chamber, Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Minn.) has run up against the same dilemma, but taken a different — though similarly fraught — approach: Her committee’s bill is up to $20 billion over the budget, and she plans to ask Congress for more money.

“She basically went to the leadership and said I need additional money … to be able to raise reference prices to be able to satisfy some of the concerns that have been expressed by folks out in the countryside,” Vilsack said. “Why aren't we seeing that from the majority?”

The situation, the secretary stressed, is urgent. The failure of last year’s farm bill amid the chaos in the House meant that the bill — usually passed every five years — was thrown into limbo.

Last September, as the five-year bill expired, Congress passed a one-year supplemental that kept all programs running at their previous levels — but left the broader trajectory of American agriculture in doubt.

As Democrats’ and Republicans’ mutually exclusive red lines on the issue loom over the process of negotiating a new farm bill, and the possibility of a second failure looms, long-term planning is becoming ever more difficult for farmers, bankers and conservationists.

All those camps, Vilsack said, “want the same thing: they want to know what the rules of the road are going to be for the next five years. 

“So the failure to get the farm bill done, makes it more difficult for farmers, for rural communities for businesses to be able to plan and to be able to implement in order to create economic opportunities.”

In comments after Vilsack's call, Thompson fired back, calling it an "eleventh-hour push" and defending both the cutbacks to the CCC and the savings they would yield. Thompson accused the secretary of using "every penny of the borrowing authority made available to him to circumvent Congress if left unchecked," and said his committee was "reasserting Congress’ authority over the Commodity Credit Corporation, which will bring reckless administrative spending under control and provides funding for key bipartisan priorities in the farm bill."

“Funding the farm bill is always a puzzle, and finding the right pieces to produce a strong farm bill has been tricky but also a worthwhile," he said. “The sudden rancor on using the CCC as a pay-for is nothing more than the latest partisan attempt to divide our committee and slow down progress on passing a farm bill.”