November 30, 2011
www.gfb.org
Vol. 29 No. 48
BUDGET SUPERCOMMITTEE FAILS, ADVANCE 2012 FARM BILL ABANDONED The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, or Supercommittee, tasked with writing a budget to trim the national debt by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, was unable to do so by the Nov. 23 statutory deadline, and efforts by the House and Senate Agriculture Committees to roll the next farm bill into the budget legislation were abandoned. The agriculture committees had developed a proposal that would have cut funding for various agriculture programs by $23 billion in what many viewed as an advance development, or “fast tracking,” of the 2012 farm bill. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said in a joint statement that the failure of the joint committee to reach an overall debt-reduction package put an end to that effort. Lucas and Stabenow have indicated they will return to their respective committees and proceed with crafting the 2012 farm bill under a more normal timetable, though much of the work must now be done during an election year. Many programs under the 2008 farm bill expire in 2012. “Now that we’re back to regular order, there’s opportunity for us to take our strategic risk reduction program and bring that back to the attention of the respective House and Senate Agriculture Committees,” said American Farm Bureau Farm Policy Specialist Dale Moore, who said agriculture groups now have an opportunity to “get them to understand why we really want to focus on the catastrophic risk reduction … risk management tools that are essential for our producers.” According to Moore, farm programs within the farm bill will be cut by at least $15 billion over 10 years. The Supercommittee’s failure to reach a consensus means that $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts will go into effect in 2013 under the terms of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which was signed into law on Aug. 2. The automatic cuts include $600 billion from defense spending and the rest from discretionary spending and some entitlement programs. Included in the cuts to non-defense spending is an estimated $15 billion in agriculture programs. The law also required the House and Senate to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution by the end of the year. The Budget Control Act raised the federal debt ceiling while placing caps on discretionary appropriations, which could include farm programs. Its enactment on Aug. 2 averted a shutdown of the federal government.