Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 2/28/18

Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts said Tuesday that he wasn't surprised that President Donald Trump's fiscal 2019 budget fully backed cuts to crop insurance by proposing subsidy limits and means testing. Still, he didn't like that the cuts were included, especially after Trump backed crop insurance when he spoke at the American Farm Bureau Federation's meeting in Nashville in January.

"There's already been an OMB effort with regards to crop insurance in the president's budget where [President Trump] said he would not do anything to cut crop insurance and then turned around and did," Roberts told reporters Tuesday after speaking at the National Anti-Hunger Conference. "I hope he's not Lizzie Borden and gonna give us another whack."

Trashing the budget: The Kansas Republican said he wasn't surprised to see cuts proposed (it's become common in presidential budgets). The idea is predictably headed for the trash in Congress, Helena writes.

"I think I may have got a little crossways with the budget director with regards to crop insurance," Roberts said Tuesday. "I don't think the president probably even saw that he cut crop insurance since he went to Nashville and said he was going to protect it. But that doesn't even matter because the president's proposal as you've heard everybody say, when it's proposed, it's proposed. We dispose of it."

Farm bill on the 'sooner' track: Roberts is still not being specific on the timing of the Senate version of the farm bill.
"Sooner than later," he told reporters Tuesday. "Sooner hasn't left town yet. We're going to try to work as expeditiously as possible. We have to get it right."