Senate Prepares to Vote on Budget Bill With Farm Safety Net Improvements

By Ryan Hanrahan

ABC News’ Allison Pecorin reported that “Senate Republicans announced Sunday that they planned a brief pause on the precession of events toward a final vote on the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill.’ Senators will begin their vote-a-rama at 9 a.m. Monday, instead of the original early morning start time that was anticipated. In the meantime, debate of the bill will continue on the Senate floor until senators finish or their time expires.”

“Once the vote-a-rama kicks off, senators will be allowed to offer an unlimited number amendments to the bill,” Pecorin reported. “When this ends, they’ll take a vote of final passage. It will need 51 votes to pass.”

Progressive Farmer’s Chris Clayton reported that “the driver behind the bill is to prevent the 2017 tax cuts from expiring, but the bill plusses up some tax cuts while also cutting spending for Medicaid and food programs for low-income people. Beyond the tax cuts, the bill also includes several provisions to improve the farm-safety net from the 2018 farm bill.”

Farm Safety Net Improvements in the Bill

Clayton reported that “the bill includes improvements to the farm safety net with as much as $67 billion in program changes over 10 years.”

“That includes raising reference prices under the Prices Loss Coverage program (PLC) and the Agricultural Risk Coverage (ARC) program. For the current crop year, the Senate bill has language that USDA will provide producers with the higher calculated payment rate in 2025 for ARC or PLC,” Clayton reported. “Producers would then go back to choosing which program they prefer in 2026 and beyond.”

“The Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) is plussed up and the bill also reduces crop-insurance premiums for farmers as well,” Clayton reported. “Payment limits would increase from $125,000 to $155,000 for individuals and then the payment limit would increase based on an inflation index. The bill also removes income caps for farmers or entities that draw 75% or more of their income from agriculture or forestry.”

“The bill also has provisions that would allow USDA to enroll up to 30 million new base acres for farmers based on production history of that ground,” Clayton reported. “In conservation, the bill takes back as much as $16 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and rolls those funds into the ten-year budgets for USDA’s main conservation programs. Still, the CBO forecasts that move as a nearly $1.8 billion in cuts compared to what the IRA and farm bill funding could have provided for conservation programs.”

“Other provisions in agriculture would expand on disaster aid for livestock producers and double funding for USDA trade promotion programs,” Clayton reported.

Alaska, Hawaii Get SNAP Cost-Share Waivers

Politico’s Samuel Benson reported that “Alaska and Hawaii could be temporarily exempted from paying for some costs of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program after last-minute negotiating from lawmakers, according to Senate Republicans’ new megabill text.”

“The new text grants the Agriculture secretary authority to waive the two states’ cost-share requirement for up to two years if they are ‘actively implementing’ a plan to lower their payment error rates, which is what will be used to calculate how much of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program states will need to fund,” Benson reported. “Alaska’s SNAP error rate was over 60% and Hawaii’s was over 20% as of fiscal year 2023, which is the latest available data.”

“Alaska’s two Republican senators, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, have spent the past several weeks pushing their colleagues to provide an exception for their state,” Benson reported. “Hawaii and Alaska are also eligible for waivers to bypass the new SNAP work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, if the Agriculture secretary deems they are making a ‘good faith effort’ to comply with the requirements.”

Clean Fuels Tax Credit

Clayton reported that “in a key provision for the biofuels industry, the American Soybean Association (ASA) and National Oilseed Processors Association (NOPA) praised the Senate for going along with the House language for the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit. Under the bill, only feedstocks from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico would qualify for the tax credit. That should curb refiners from importing high volumes of used cooking oil coming from China.”

“The Senate also expanded the Small Agri-Biodiesel Producer credit from 10¢ to 20¢ a gallon, and allows for transferring 45Z credits, which ASA and NOPA stated would help smaller biofuel producers,” Clayton reported.

“The oilseed backers noted the soy crush industry has invested more than $6 billion to increased crush capacity by more than 25% since 2021,” Clayton reported. “Along with that, current trade disputes demand more focus on increasing domestic use to help make up for some of those trade markets.”

Senate Prepares to Vote on Budget Bill With Farm Safety Net Improvements was originally published by Farmdoc.