Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., released the text of her draft farm bill on Monday with just weeks remaining in this Congress and more than five months after releasing a detailed summary of the proposal.
The 1,397-page bill would limit President-elect Donald Trump's use of the Commodity Credit Corporation account to compensate farmers for trade losses as he did in his first term.
The top Republican on Senate Ag, John Boozman of Arkansas quickly rejected the proposal.
“An 11th hour partisan proposal released 415 days after the expiration of the current farm bill is insulting. America’s farmers deserve better," he said in a post on X.
Stabenow, who is retiring from the Senate, told reporters the draft bill represented her version of what the next farm bill should look like.
"So, this is my vision. It's important to me to put forward what I believe is a robust bill for farmers and ranchers, an important bill for families in rural communities," she said.
The bill includes a 5% increase in reference prices for the Price Loss Coverage program, and changes to the reference price escalator that would increase the effective reference price after periods in which market prices have been elevated.
The bill would provide $39 billion in increased funding by restricting USDA's use of the CCC from 2025 through 2030 unless the department has congressional authority. The bill says the CCC "is authorized to use its general powers only to carry out operations as Congress may specifically authorize or provide for."
The Congressional Budget Office would be directed to estimate the savings of the provision at $6.7 billion per year. The provision could potentially restrict the ability of the Trump administration to provide assistance to offset the impact of retaliatory tariffs. A committee aide said the $6.7 billion figure was based on the average of what has been spent from CCC over the past 10 years.
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She told reporters her bill "embraces" the Republicans' method of paying for increased commodity program funding, referring to the CCC restriction. She said the bill also would provide payments to farmers faster than they get them now under the 2018 farm bill.
"Our farmers would be thrilled to see the support that’s in this," she said.
She conceded that Republicans may cut nutrition spending in the next Congress and also remove the climate guardrails from conservation program funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act. "They may, but they’re not doing it on my watch," she said.
Other Senate Ag Republicans joined Boozman in attacking Stabenow's proposal.
"This morning, Chairwoman Stabenow released her Phony Farm Bill—a 1,400-page document that no Republican committee member has reviewed or had the opportunity to collaborate on. This is not a sincere or transparent effort to address the urgent needs of Rural America," Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said in a post on X.
GOP leaders of the House and Senate Ag committees have complained for months that Stabenow hasn’t fully engaged with them in negotiating a new bill, and it hasn't been clear her draft could get through committee. Democrats currently control the committee by one vote, 11-10, and Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., has said that the reference price increases Stabenow proposed in May were insufficient.
Under the Stabenow bill text, the reference prices would be set at $3.89 for corn (up from $3.70 under the 2018 farm bill), $8.82 for soybeans (up from $8.40), $5.78 for wheat (up from $5.50), and 38.5 cents for seed cotton (up from 36.7 cents).
By comparison, the House Ag Committee's farm bill would boost the reference price for soybeans from $8.40 to $10 a bushel, an increase of more than 19%. The rate for corn would rise 10.8 % to $4.10 a bushel, Rates would go to $6.35 for wheat and 42 cents a pound for seed cotton.
The Agriculture Risk Coverage guarantee would be increased to 88% of the benchmark revenue, up from 86%.
According to a press release, the bill would provide $20 billion “to strengthen the farm safety net to support all of agriculture and establishes a permanent structure for disaster assistance so emergency relief reaches farmers faster,” $8.5 billion “to help families make ends meet, put food on the table, and improve access to nutrition assistance,” and $4.3 billion “to improve quality of life in the rural communities that millions of Americans call home."
The release of Stabenow's bill text comes as Republican leaders of the House and Senate Ag committees have turned to talking about the need for a package of disaster aid and relief for commodity price declines.
Boozman said last week he wants to write the legislation in a way that would add baseline to the next farm bill, something lawmakers did for cotton and dairy producers in early 2018 to pave the way for passage of a new farm bill later that year.
The House Agriculture Committee advanced a farm bill in May but it has never been put on the House floor, and the legislation isn't fully paid for, because the CBO estimate for CCC savings is far below what the committee needed.
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