President Joe Biden has come out against a House Republican funding measure for USDA and FDA, arguing the bill goes beyond an agreement to cut spending reached earlier this year with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
That agreement, which also raised the nation’s debt ceiling, set discretionary spending limits roughly even with fiscal 2023 allocations, the White House said in a statement of administrative policy released Monday. But the bill offered by the House Appropriations Committee would fund USDA at its lowest level since 2006, according to an analysis from House Democrats.
Committee Republicans argue the cuts — about $11.7 billion below Biden’s budget request for USDA — are much smaller after including about $8 billion in rescissions from pandemic relief and Inflation Reduction Act spending.
In the veto threat, the White House said the GOP is “wasting time with partisan bills that cut domestic spending to levels well below” his agreement with McCarthy and “endanger critical services for the American people.
“These levels would result in deep cuts to climate change and clean energy programs, essential nutrition services, law enforcement, consumer safety, education and health care,” the SAP noted.
The SAP offered specific criticisms of the bill’s funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, rescissions to USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program and New Empowering Rural America Program, and policy riders tied to USDA’s distressed borrower relief efforts.
The House bill also seeks to restrict the ag secretary’s use of the Commodity Credit Corporation, a fund that has been used in recent years to fund the Market Facilitation Program in response to the 2018 trade war with China and the 2022 Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, to spending authorized by Congress.
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Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack defended the latter program earlier this year before the House Ag Appropriations Subcommittee. The SAP cites “separation of powers concerns” regarding “conditioning the Executive authority to take certain actions on receiving the approval of the House and Senate Committees.”
The veto threat on a chamber’s ag appropriations bill is rare but not without precedent. In 2014, then-President Barack Obama threatened to veto the ag spending measure over school nutrition and other concerns.
Aside from the ag spending bill, which funds USDA, FDA and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Biden also released a similar veto threat Monday on a House bill with funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs and construction efforts within the Department of Defense.
The House is scheduled to consider the appropriations bills this week; the House Rules Committee is scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon to consider amendments to the ag spending bill.
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