American Agri-Women

Congressional Ag Committee leaders met yesterday afternoon to resolve where the money would come from to finance the additional $10 billion over the budget baseline, but no final decisions were made. House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders are apparently “close” but no final deal has yet been struck.

The Administration has laid out its requirements for the Farm Bill:

The Administration is willing to consider spending of up to $10 billion above baseline, if the agreement contains significant program reforms over and above the House proposal dated February 12 and contains the program reform items listed below. This total must include the cost of any companion measure and would specifically include any disaster assistance funding, as well as any provisions within the jurisdiction of the Ways & Means/Finance Committees.
- The bill must not include revenue increases, including those labeled as tax compliance initiatives. Tax revenue should not be made available for the sole purpose of increasing government spending.
- Any agreement must also eliminate budget gimmicks, including, but not limited to, shifting payments outside the budget scoring window, unrealistically terminating new programs and benefits in individual years, or requiring directed scoring. The recently announced agreement between Democratic Members of Congress includes a spending increase of $10 billion above baseline. However, timing shifts between fiscal years will result in government outlays significantly exceeding $10 billion. For instance, as CBO’s official scoring of the Senate Committee bill noted “…those changes would shift about $9.8 billion in net government costs from within the 2008-2017 period until after 2017.” Any cost estimate should include actual government outlays and not exclude payments shifted outside the budget window.
- The final cost of the bill, whether at $6.1 billion or up to $10 billion over baseline, must be fully offset within both the five and ten year period by mutually agreed upon reductions in spending. Such offsets should be included in the same legislative vehicle, allowing the Congress to meet their self-imposed “pay-go” budget requirements.