The draft House bill reflects the tight spending caps agreed to in December for fiscal 2015. House GOP releases ag budget

House Republicans proposed a $20.9 billion budget for agriculture and food safety programs Monday, an 82-page bill that challenges the White House on nutrition rules and denies major new funding sought by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to better regulate the rich derivatives market.

The CFTC fares better than in the past in that the GOP allows for a modest $3 million increase for information technology investments. But the $218 million budget is still $62 million less than President Barack Obama’s request and continues a pattern that has frustrated the administration’s ability to implement Wall Street reforms called for under the Dodd-Frank law enacted in July 2010.


In the case of nutrition programs, the House bill seeks to open the door for starchy, white potatoes to be added to the list of qualified vegetables under the WIC supplemental feeding program for pregnant women and their young children. The Agriculture Department would also be required to establish a waiver process for local school districts which have found it too costly to comply with tougher nutrition standards for school lunch and breakfast programs.

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And in a surprising twist, the bill language specifies that only rural areas are to benefit in the future from funding requested by the administration this year to continue a modest summer demonstration program to help children from low-income households — both urban and rural — during those months when school meals are not available.

Since 2010, the program has operated from an initial appropriation of $85 million, and the goal has been to test alternative approaches to distribute aid when schools are not in session. The White House asked for an additional $30 million to continue the effort, but the House bill provides $27 million for what’s described as an entirely new pilot program focused on rural areas only.

Democrats were surprised to see urban children were excluded. And the GOP had some trouble explaining the history itself. But a spokeswoman confirmed that the intent of the bill is a pilot project in “rural areas” only.

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In the case of WIC and white potatoes, the provision follows on strong lobbying by the industry which is hoping to win similar language Thursday when the full Senate Appropriations Committee is slated to consider its own version of the same agriculture bill.

The dollars at stake are less important than the prestige of being judged qualified for WIC, which is considered the premier nutrition program for the government.

For the industry, concerned that younger women have moved away from potatoes, gaining access to WIC is an important marketing tool. Just as strongly, critics worry that the end result will be to open the door to other special interests and wreck a long-standing commitment by Congress to let independent scientists decide what foods are most needed.

Apart from these controversies, the draft House bill circulated Monday reflects the tight spending caps agreed to last December for fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1. The $20.9 billion total is close to the enacted levels for the current year, and from one program to the next, the ups and downs are typically on the margins and less than $100 million.

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For example, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is held to $870.7 million, just $45.8 million above current funding. Agricultural research funding appears close to a freeze, and the Farm Service Agency gets just a $27 million increase as it tries to implement the new five-year farm bill enacted in February.

Similarly, the Food and Drug Administration is promised $2.6 billion in discretionary appropriations, about $23 million over current funding. The bigger increase will come from FDA user fees, which are expected to yield an additional $98 million in revenues to help offset food and drug safety activities.

While most of the appropriations debate will focus on these discretionary spending accounts, the bill also covers a broad array of mandatory or entitlement programs including farm subsidies and food aid for the poor.

Total mandatory funding — as scored by the Congressional Budget Office — adds up to about $121.6 billion. Added together with discretionary spending, the bill is estimated near $142.5 billion.

On the farm side, an estimated $9.07 billion is provided for the Commodity Credit Corp. and another $8.6 billion is allocated for crop insurance programs. The CCC number reflects promised savings from the new farm bill, but critics also argued that the bills raided conservation accounts, taking more than $500 million from mandatory accounts so as to claim savings to offset discretionary programs.

On the nutrition side, the bill assumes an estimated $20.5 billion for child nutrition and school meals and about $82.5 billion for food stamps, formally titled the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP.