Lexington, KY - The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, or so-called "Super Committee," didn't quite live up to its name after failing to make recommendations on federal budget reductions as charged by the Budget Control Act of 2011.
The 12-member committee was created earlier this year to come up with a plan to cut federal spending and do it in a bipartisan way by Thanksgiving. While its actions were closely watched by nearly everyone that might have had a stake in its outcome, those in the agriculture industry had a special interest.
Along with other federally funded programs, the committee was to consider reductions in the 2012 Farm Bill, a move seen by some as a way to prevent deeper cuts in the bill from happening later on and by others as an out-and-out attempt to secretly pass the bill without a reasonable period of extensive debate.
While most non-farmers have little knowledge of what the farm bill does, it touches just about everyone in some form or fashion. The bill is a piece of legislation that is renewed every five years and governs many agricultural and food programs, including commodity support payments for farmers in the event a catastrophe happens during a growing season, conservation programs and food stamps. It also assists with programs connected to energy, forestry, research and extension programs, as well as crop insurance and livestock production programs. The five-year cost of the 2008 Farm Bill was about $284 billion.
Recommendations for cuts in the bill came from the House and Senate Agriculture Committees and totaled $23 billion.
But U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said he and other members of that committee had little to do with the recommendations.
"In recent weeks, the chairs of the House and Senate Agriculture committees have worked on a Farm Bill proposal, largely without my input from the other members of the two committees," he said.
That's not the message sent by those ag committee chairs after last week's announcement.
Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said in their own statement, "We are pleased we were able to work in a bipartisan way with committee members and agriculture stakeholders to generate sound ideas to cut spending by tens of billions while maintaining key priorities to grow the country's agriculture economy."
Roberts later said, "I know that Chairwoman Stabenow and Chairman Lucas have worked hard to put together a recommendation to the Joint Committee. However, this process was not the way to write the Farm Bill."
He also said that with the failure of the committee, the bill will now be written in regular order as it should be.
Judith McGeary, executive director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, said the summary of the recommendations sent to the Super Committee looked like a complete rewrite of the Farm Bill to her, and the attempt to include the bill in this way was unprecedented as far as the way farm bills have been handled in the past.
"They were bypassing the entire normal procedure that allows people to have input into federal agricultural policy five years at a time, and there was no reason for it," she said. "Cuts had to be made. That was the purpose of the Super Committee, but it very easily could have been a situation where the ag committee agreed with the Super Committee as to how large the cuts were, set a budget for the bill and then wrote it through the normal process. The existence of the Super Committee itself wasn't a good reason for trying to write the Farm Bill in it."
It's hard to say how many of the $23 billion in proposed cuts will carry forward now, but according to the document sent to the committee by Stabenow and Lucas, had the committee succeeded, direct payment programs would have been eliminated. The recommendations also called for crop insurance programs to be strengthened, for a simplified risk management program, and for an end to farm payments to individuals with an adjusted gross income of more than $950,000, just to name a few.
Jeff Harper of the Kentucky Farm Bureau (KFB) said when looking for reductions, the direct payment programs are the biggest target, but farmers often need those supports.
"There has to be some sort of safety net for our farmers. There's too much risk, and whether that's through strengthening or propping up crop insurance, our farmers have to have some sort of safety net to continue to provide the food and fiber that our nation and this world depends on," he said.
Harper added that it is obvious that the conversation in Washington right now is about bringing spending under control but noted that the Farm Bill is a drop in the bucket when it comes to the federal budget.
"When you look at the total federal government, and especially if you really dig down into the agricultural portion of the Farm Bill, it is such a minute portion of the entire federal budget that if they eliminated all farm programs, it wouldn't have any type of effect on any of this federal deficit," he said.
However, Harper thinks that by the time this Farm Bill makes its way to the president's desk, it will contain some type of direct payment cuts. If that is the case, he said some type of structure still needs to be in place.
"If Congress thinks that the direct payments need to be eliminated, we would still advocate some sort of framework because, yes, commodity prices are good right now, and yes, according to the USDA, they're forecasting that farm receipts are going to reach an all-time high. But I can also remember $2 corn. While none of us wants to go back to that, we are still going to try and advocate for at least a framework even if there's no funding, because if you lose that framework or the program, the chances of ever getting back anything that's similar - it would be a long shot," he said.
Harper also noted as the Farm Bill is returned to a more normal order of discussion, Congress will have to make it a priority in order to pass it by Sept. 30, 2012, when the current bill expires.