House Agriculture Committee leaders scrambled last week to keep crop insurance off the chopping block.
Ranking member Collin Peterson of Minnesota says Tuesday’s inclusion of a $3 billion cut to the crop insurance program as part of a two year budget bill came as quite a surprise.
“We did the farm bill (and) made the cuts that we were told to make. This is, in effect, opening the farm bill.”
Peterson and Ag Committee Chair Mike Conaway held a meeting to discuss ways to prevent the cut to crop insurance.
“There were about 50 of us in the meeting (including the Republican leadership). I think they figured out that they better take care of this. So they agreed to take the provision out in the omnibus appropriation bill that has to be done by Dec. 11.”
He says House leadership is on board with the plan.
“I’ve talked to (Speaker of the House) Paul Ryan and also Hal Rogers, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. We have a rock-solid commitment from them that this will be fixed. So we then went ahead and supported the budget bill.”
Senate leaders have also agreed to restore the crop insurance cuts in the omnibus appropriations bill.
Source: www.brownfieldagnews.com