Negotiations over a package of market relief assistance for farmers appeared to be at an impasse Saturday after Democratic leaders rejected the latest GOP proposal.
The Republican proposal failed to address a key priority for Democrats – rolling Inflation Reduction Act funding into the farm bill to permanently increase spending levels for conservation programs, a Democratic source said.
“We are waiting for direction to see what we can do to salvage this, if anything,” the source said Saturday morning.
The dispute increases the prospect that lawmakers, at best, can only pass a straight one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill before the end of the year, and they may not e
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., and the top Republican on the Senate Ag Committee, John Boozman of Arkansas, issued a joint statement Saturday morning that said, “It appears that congressional Democrats have not learned the lessons of the most recent election and continue to neglect the needs of rural America.
“The failure to include economic assistance will have devastating and lasting consequences on our farm families, the rural communities in which they live and American agriculture. For that reason, we intend to oppose any supplemental spending package that does not provide meaningful assistance to our farmers.”
In a post on X, House Ag Committee Democrats blamed the GOP leadership for the stalemate: "The failure to provide economic assistance to keep an onslaught of farm foreclosures and retirement sales from happening is on Republican leadership. Instead of taking a bipartisan deal, they played politics with the lives and livelihoods of people in farm country."
Democrats had earlier proposed providing $10 billion in market relief, the cost of which could be fully offset because of a quirk in how the Congressional Budget Office estimates the indirect fiscal impact of moving IRA funding into the bill.
The IRA funding, however, has emerged as a critical sticking point because of the House GOP leadership’s objection to bringing the money into the farm bill baseline and preserving climate guardrails on at least some of the funding. Democrats want to retain climate-related restrictions for IRA funding provided through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.
The cost of the GOP's $12 billion aid package would not have been offset but would have instead been considered as emergency spending along with disaster aid, sources said.
Lawmakers are fast running out of time to each a deal on the relief package. The farm bill extension must be included with a continuing resolution that Congress needs to pass by next Friday to keep the government funded.
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