Farm Bill?
Agriculture’s time in the spotlight: Focusing on the 2018 farm bill
By Roman Keeney, opinion contributor — 02/28/18 02:30 PM EST
As U.S. net farm income continues its decline to lows not seen in a decade, agriculture is using this spring to ready for its turn in the political spotlight. The 2014 farm bill, which supports farm incomes and agricultural risk management (among other things), is set to expire at the close of fiscal 2018 this September.
As prelude to the large undertaking of passing new farm and food legislation we have seen the Trump administration lay out its marker, calling for
significant spending reductions on crop insurance as well as an overhaul of the costly ($71 billion in fiscal 2016) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Congress has made moves as well, securing some $800 million in additional funds for cotton and dairy producer programs in the February budget deal that ended the most recent shutdown.
The recent flurry of activity follows a year where agriculture’s interests were benched, particularly with the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and threats to end the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The U.S. agriculture lobby is bristling at the U.S. withdrawal from TPP and the advantages it affords TPP participants such as Canada and Australia in protected markets such as Japan.
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http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/376048-agricultures-time-in-the-spotlight-focusing-on-the-2018-farm-bill
And the above article came out BEFORE the "trade war" started up.
Food-Stamp Fight Imperils Farm Bill
By Kristina Peterson
April 8, 2018 7:00 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON—House Speaker Paul Ryan’s long-sought goal of overhauling welfare programs will get a kick-start when Congress returns to Washington this week, as Republicans prepare to release a new, five-year farm bill that would impose tougher work requirements to get food stamps.
With the government funded until October and control of the House up for grabs in November’s midterm elections, the Republicans’ effort to overhaul the food-stamp program as part of the farm bill is raising what is likely to be one of the last policy fights in Congress this year.
The House is also expected to vote later this week on a constitutional amendment that would require a balanced federal budget, a largely symbolic move given that it would need the approval of two-thirds of both the House and the Senate, as well as ratification by 38 of the 50 state legislatures. That appears unlikely, particularly since Congress approved last month a $1.3 trillion spending bill that added more to the federal deficit.
The fight over the farm bill—a piece of legislation with an estimated price tag of about $900 billion that is set to expire at the end of September—has been brewing for weeks. But the outlines of the GOP proposal to rewrite the nutrition provisions that make up about 80% of the bill’s funding have already prompted a partisan standoff in the House Agriculture Committee.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/food-stamp-fight-imperils-farm-bill-1523185200
What this particular article leaves out is the other stuff in there that was noted in the first article - all the commodities subsidies/insurance.
= new reply since forum marked as read
