BONITA SPRINGS, Fla.—When Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack testifies before the House Agriculture Committee Wednesday, he is likely to get some tough questions about the Obama administration's views on food stamps and crop insurance--and the country will get a sense of just how difficult it will be for Congress to cut anything out of Agriculture Department programs.

Congressional Republican leaders, including House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway of Texas, have expressed enthusiasm for reining in the deficit through reconciliation, a budget tool that would require each authorizing committee to trim the programs under its jurisdiction, probably on a percentage basis.

But the Republican congressional focus is on cutting food stamps while the administration has proposed cutting crop insurance. Last week at the first of two crop insurance industry conferences here, Mary Kay Thatcher of the American Farm Bureau Federation tied the two together, telling the Crop Insurance and Reinsurance Bureau meeting that proposals to cut food stamps put a "bull's eye" on crop insurance. Liberals will argue that if Congress is going to reduce the deficit by taking food away from children it should also cut farm subsidies, Thatcher said.

Food stamps—formally the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP—is the biggest Agriculture Department program, and cutting it would seem easy in a Republican-led Congress. But the liberal-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities noted in a report this week that food stamp participation rates and spending have declined since the expiration of Recovery Act provisions that allowed more people to get higher benefits, and participation also has gone down as the economy improves. The administration and congressional Democrats would oppose any efforts to make eligibility more difficult or reduce benefit levels, and so might some Republicans as the presidential election year approaches.

The situation with crop insurance is the opposite. While the aggies in Congress defend crop insurance, the Obama administration has long held the view that the program, which pays for about 62 percent of the cost of farmers' premiums and pays crop insurance companies to manage the program, is subsidized more than necessary, especially for big farmers. The cost of the program is about $9 billion per year, although federal budget officers have projected that the cost will go down if crop prices stay low and crops have a lower insurable value.

For fiscal year 2016, the president's budget proposed cutting the premium subsidy by 10 percentage points for protecting farmers from certain revenue drops and for reducing the coverage that farmers can get in case they are prevented from planted a crop because of bad weather. The changes would save $16 billion over 10 years.

The Environmental Working Group, which has been credited with leading the campaign that ended the direct payments to farmers whether prices were high or low, has already praised the administration's proposal. EWG said the high level of subsidization of crop insurance helps big farmers too much and leads farmers to plant so intensely that they put stress on the land.

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania have introduced a measure to cap crop insurance benefits at $50,000 per person or entity.

Farm groups, the crop insurance industry, and the bankers who consider crop insurance a vital protection against weather and price risks sent all members of Congress a letter that the cuts would "cripple" the program.

At the national crop insurance industry convention here this week, Tim Weber, chairman of the American Association of Crop Insurers and National Crop Insurance Services, said: "Make no mistake, crop insurance's days of flying under the radar are done." But he added that "those with an agenda or an anti-agriculture bent cannot be given free rein to define our industry or the policies that underpin the rural economy." Conaway and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, sent videos to the cnference promising to defend the program.

Crop insurance's best case may be that USDA and companies have developed policies to cover livestock and fruits and vegetables, as well as corn, soybeans, and other commodities.Brandon Willis, the administrator of USDA's Risk Management Agency, which oversees the program, said here that media scrutiny of crop insurance has grown as the program has grown, but "the more people understand about crop insurance the more they like it."

The most important defender of food stamps and crop insurance may be Senate Agriculture Committee ranking member Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan, who told National Journal that she will oppose any cuts to the farm bill in budget reconciliation. Stabenow's position is important because she is a member of the Senate Budget Committee, which will determine the terms for reconciliation. "My message is we already did our part" in the 2014 farm bill, said Stabenow, adding that "we are the only committee that voluntarily cut spending $23 billion and cut more than 100 programs." "Universally people do not want to reopen the farm bill, any part of it," Stabenow said. If Congress wants to do reconciliation, she added, "they can do it for everybody else."

Wouldn't it be fitting if the senator who chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee when the farm bill was written ends up being the one to save it?

Source - nationaljournal.com