Farm Bill 2.0 May Struggle for Votes

The House Agriculture Committee has begun marking up what’s being called Farm Bill 2.0, but uncertainty remains about whether the legislation can advance beyond committee and clear the full House. Washington analyst Jim Wiesemeyer says lawmakers may be missing the bigger structural issues facing agriculture. “Primarily, how do they answer the question that the Congress has not increased the borrowing authority for the Commodity Credit Corporation for 40 years? It’s been a 30 billion maximum borrowing authority. And increasingly, until we get out of this structural downturn in the business of agriculture, they’re relying more and more on USDA to help fund various disaster and other aid programs, like the bridge assistance. So I personally don’t think that they’re even focusing on the right topics.” Wiesemeyer says the political math could prove just as challenging, with several provisions drawing Democratic opposition. “The Democrats are going to propose higher conservation funding stronger climate-related incentives protection of nutrition assistance funding levels and stronger guardrails around crop insurance reform so bottom line even if this gets out of the House Agriculture Committee later this week you’ve got big hurdles on that floor because the Republicans barely control the House and you’ll have about 40 Republicans for various reasons vote against this.” Even if the bill advances out of committee, Wiesemeyer says divisions over conservation funding, nutrition assistance and regulatory language could make final passage an uphill battle.