Source:  NATIONAL SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE COALITION, 12/11/14


Late on December 9, Congress released their final annual appropriations bill to keep the government running for the rest of the fiscal year, and while there is some good news, overall it’s bleak news for sustainable agriculture – complete with drastic cuts to critical conservation programs and anti-farmer policy riders that favor big livestock integrators over actual farmers. The bill emerged after a couple of weeks of behind closed doors meetings of House and Senate leadership and appropriations leaders.
The full House is expected to vote on the bill December 11, the day the current continuing resolution keeping the government funded runs out. A very short-term continuing resolution may be needed to fund the government for a day or two to avert a government shut-down and give the Senate a chance to vote. The bill is expected to pass, with votes from both parties, though the vote tallies are expected to be close. The White House has indicated the President will sign the bill.

We will update readers on legislative action on the bill in the coming days, and will also publish our annual chart of line by line funding decisions on sustainable farm and food programs.

Overview
In total, this so-called “cromnibus” package, weighing in at 1,600 pages, authorizes $1.1 trillion in discretionary spending to fund the federal government through September 30 of next year, with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security, whose funding will need to be renegotiated in February once Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress. The new “cromnibus” term is a conflation of “CR” or continuing resolution, which is what the homeland security bill is – an autopilot continuation of last year’s spending levels – and “omnibus” or the process Congress often uses to combine multiple appropriations bills into a single mega bill. The CR for homeland security is intended to keep Republican options open to strike back at the White House early next year for having taken a few steps in the direction of immigration reform.

The cromnibus bill represents largely flat or slightly shrinking domestic social program spending levels, including overall cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  Of the trillion dollars in newly appropriated funds for 2015, $20.6 billion (or roughly two percent) is directed to fund food, farm, and rural development programs administered by USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This level is a cut of $305 million below last year’s funding.

With the exception of homeland security, the bill is a real appropriations bill, not another autopilot-type continuing resolution locking in old spending patterns. The bill includes new multi-billion dollar bumped up funding packages for military spending in the Middle East, for Ebola, and assistance to reduce the flow of Central American children to the US, among other items sought by the White House. On the other hand, it keeps a very tight lid on domestic spending for normal government functions, and includes plenty of policy measures hitching a ride on the last train leaving the station, before the 113th Congress closes up its work this month. While White House priorities such as climate rules, affordable health care, water regulation, and school lunch nutrition standards emerged relatively unscathed, the new bill take major steps to weaken campaign finance reform, Dodd-Frank financial reform, fair competition rules for the meat industry, and protections for the western sage grouse, to name but a few.

For more of this story, click here.