USDA appropriations bill stalled but infrastructure legislation draws attention

Disaster and drought relief is coming to growers, but there is a hitch.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a U.S. Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration funding bill Aug. 4 that provides $7 billion in disaster funds for crop and livestock losses in 2020 and 2021.

 However, Senate Republican leaders threatened to block the fiscal appropriations bills until they resolve a budget dispute with the Democrats.

“Even as Democrats crow about how all this spending is so good and so needed, they’re petrified to vote for the credit limit increase that would make it possible,” U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ken., said on the Senate floor. The current debt limit is projected to expire this fall and observers said that Congress must act on the debt limit before its August recess.

“Democrats want a new debt limit increase for the new borrowing and new spending that they have willfully piled up since they took power. About two trillion back in March. Trillions more sometime soon,” he said.

“If our colleagues want to ram through yet another reckless taxing and spending spree without our input, if they want all this spending and debt to be their signature legacy, they should leap at the chance to own every bit of it,” he said. ““Let me make something perfectly clear: if they don’t need or want our input, they won’t get our help. They won’t get our help with the debt limit increase that these reckless plans will require.”

McConnell said that without an agreement on spending levels for fiscal 2022, which begins on Oct. 1, the USDA-FDA bill and two other appropriations bills approved by the Appropriations Committee might be put aside.

Drought relief and infrastructure

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Aug. 3 that the agency is investing $25 million to assist agricultural producers impacted by worsening drought conditions, including relief to impacted California and Oregon farmers who are unable to plant this season due to lack of water.

Robert Guenther, senior vice president of public policy, said July 29 the United Fresh Produce Association was closely following Senate consideration of a big infrastructure passage. Media outlets reported the Senate could wrap up consideration of the bill by Aug. 5.

“I think the most important part of the bill - and I’m certain all of our members on the West Coast would agree – is that there is about $8.3 billion in infrastructure investment related to conveyance of water, building of reservoirs, refurbishing reservoirs, really trying to address (those) issues that we’ve seen so many times in the last 15 to 30 years when there’s a significant drought,” he said. 

Once the Senate finishes with the infrastructure bill, the House would have to pass a bill, which eventually would have to be reconciled during a conference with the Senate.