While Senators and Representatives scrambling to create a new five-year farm bill, House Republicans are already planning to significantly cut farm spending, even while simultaneously demanding that a new farm bill will need to significantly decrease spending.
While the failure of the 2012 Farm Bill can be largely blamed on House Republicans and election year politics, it also faced a rough road thanks to major differences between the bill passed in the Senate and the bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee. While both bills committed to major cuts, the House bill insisted that these cuts should come from nutritional programs.
Despite these differences, both bills sought to protect and reinforce crop insurance programs.
The recent federal budget proposed by Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, however, would increase cuts to farm spending, with the proposed budget going as far as stating, “taxpayers should not finance payments for a business sector that is more than capable of thriving on its own.”
Other Republican representatives are suggesting major reductions in crop insurance programs, with Arizona Senator Jeff Flake and Tennessee Representative John Duncan introducing a bill that would reduce federal subsidies for crop insurance premiums, requiring farmers to pay more than 60 percent of crop insurance premiums.
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Written by: Justin Ellison / Farm Plus Staff Writer