Senate and House Agriculture Committee leaders indicated last week that the committees intend to do the bulk of the work on the next farm bill during 2006, but do not expect to finish writing the farm bill until 2007.
The 2002 farm bill covers the period through the crop year 2007, which means that sections of it expire at different times, depending on the Agriculture Department's official designation of the planting, growing and harvesting period for crops.
The Senate Agriculture Committee on Jan. 26 passed an organizational resolution that sets the committee's budget from March 1 through Sept. 30 at $2.1 million, but raises it to $3.7 million for fiscal year 2006, money that a spokesman for Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said would be used to hold hearings in Washington and throughout the country.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said at a news briefing the same day he plans to begin hearings on the next farm bill later this year and continue them in 2006, but that he does not believe the committee would finish a farm bill until 2007.
The plans to hold hearings during 2006 raises the question of whether there will be pressure on Congress to finish the bill before the 2006 elections. But two key farm lobbyists - Mary Kay Thatcher of the American Farm Bureau Federation and Tom Buis of the National Farmers Union - told Agweek they believe Congress should wait until 2007 to finish the bill. Thatcher said that if the United States finishes a new farm bill before the Doha Round trade negotiations are complete, the European countries would be able to use the information in the negotiations and developing countries "will see less need to do anything about tariff reductions."
Budget pressures
Both Thatcher and Buis said they believe budget pressures on agriculture may less in 2007 than in 2006. Buis added that the Farmers Union would argue that the 2002 farm bill has not been part of the problem of increased spending because it was written as a countercyclical bill and has cost $20 billion less than projected and less than the 1996 Freedom to Farm bill and the ad hoc disaster payments that were added to that bill. "We have been more prudent than most farm programs," Buis said.
Both Chambliss and Goodlatte told reporters they intend to defend mandatory farm programs from cuts in the fiscal year 2006 budget. "We can't afford a reduction in the budget for agriculture," Chambliss said. But he added that if "every other mandatory program" is asked to "review their budgets," then the Senate Agriculture Committee would take up the question of agriculture budget cuts.
Border issue
Goodlatte also said he believes he "can sell to anybody" how agriculture has used taxpayer dollars in mandatory programs. Both Chambliss and Goodlatte said they will wait until after the Feb. 3 Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on the Agriculture Department's rule to reopen the U.S. border to Canadian live cattle to say whether they believe the rule should go into effect on March 7 as planned.
The U.S. border has been closed to Canadian cattle since the discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease, in Canada in May 2003.
Goodlatte, noting that two more cases of mad cow disease were found in Canada shortly after USDA announced the rule change in late December, said his views might depend on whether USDA and National Cattlemen's Beef Association inspection tours of Canada show that Canadian efforts against mad cow disease are "as represented" or not.
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