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Stabenow, Roberts investigating farm program cuts

By JERRY HAGSTROM

WICHITA, Kan. — Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and ranking member Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, both said here today that they are investigating how much Congress will cut farm programs under the debt-ceiling deficit reduction bill passed in August, but they indicated they will take different approaches.

After a 2012 farm bill hearing hosted by Roberts in his home state, Stabenow told The Hagstrom Report that she will begin by asking the Congressional Budget Office how much would be cut if the super committee that is supposed to come up with a debt reduction deal by December does not come to agreement and a percentage cut across military and most domestic programs goes into effect.

Noting that she is not sure what the process will be like in September, Stabenow said, "We will start by looking at what the number will be with an across-the-board cut."

Roberts, who chaired the House Agriculture Committee in 1995 to 1996 when cuts were imposed, said he would approach the 12-member super committee and ask them to tell him how much they believe should be cut in agriculture.

He noted that when the House leadership told him in 1995 how much he was expected to cut, "I said ‘no,’ and got a better number. That’s how ‘Freedom to Farm’ was done."

The authorizing committees in the House and Senate are supposed to make recommendations to the super committee by Oct. 14, but the super committee has not indicated it will recommend specific amounts. Some congressional aides have said the super committee is unlikely to make specific requests, while other aides have said the committees won’t want to offer cuts.

Stabenow said she is working well with Roberts and is determined “to make sure” that [the budget cutting and farm bill writing process] is about agriculture and that we will not get into the [partisan] division that is happening way too much. I am confident we can come together and get things done.”

The hearing took place in the context of a severe drought in some parts of Kansas and flooding in other areas.

David Schemm, who grows wheat on the far western edge of Kansas near Sharon Spring, offered testimony.

“I can think of no better year in my 18 years as a producer to highlight the role the federal government plays as a partner in my operation,” he said. “We count on the federal government for research and development to address production challenges we face; for an aggressive free-trade agenda to allow us access to world markets for our products; and for a functioning safety net to address risks out of our control, such as those we have seen this year.”

Stabenow, who hosted the first farm bill field hearing in her home state of Michigan on May 31, said the biggest surprise today was how much similarity there was between the concerns of Michigan and Kansas farmers. She noted that, while Kansas farmers are facing drought and flooding, the biggest disaster issue in Michigan this year was a frost.

“What you are going through is very tough, very serious,” Stabenow said at a news conference. Both Stabenow and Roberts said they are determined to streamline farm programs for greater efficiency.

At the hearing, eight farm leaders and two bankers all agreed that crop insurance is the most important farm program now. Some said that direct payments have acted like emergency payments, but others said that the much-criticized supplemental agricultural disaster assistance program known as SURE could function effectively if the qualifying process and the length of time it takes to receive payment is shortened. Schemm noted he had received help under the SURE program, but it had taken a long time to get the money.

Jeff Whitham, chairman of the Western State Bank in Garden City, said he considers crop insurance to be the most efficient program in the farm safety net, followed by SURE. But Whitham said the criteria for SURE should be tightened up because some farmers who had a good revenue year in 2008 received a SURE payment because there was a disaster in an adjoining county.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who wrote the SURE program into the 2008 farm bill with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has sent the Congressional Budget Office a proposal to combine the countercyclical program, the average crop revenue election program, SURE and other disaster programs into a single program.

Whitham said he considers the direct payment program less efficient because farmers get payments whether they have had a good or bad year.

Roberts, who created the direct payments program in the 1996, quipped at a news conference that his views on the criticism of direct payments is “classified.” But he added that in the farm bill discussion “everything is on the table,” a phrase he has used in the past to signal that all farm programs plus food stamps, by far the biggest item in the USDA budget, are in play. The food stamp program was not mentioned at the hearing today.

Whitman and others also praised the environmental quality incentives program known as EQIP as effective in Kansas, particularly helping farmers who have been getting irrigation water from the Ogallala aquifer, but are transitioning to dryland farming.

Stabenow and Roberts also discussed the problem of funding agricultural research since Congress has stopped earmarking agricultural research projects. Stabenow said the result had been that agriculture has taken the second biggest cut of any program, with only transportation being cut more.

“There were a few bad apples in regards to earmarks and boy, did they get the headlines," Roberts said. "You can’t have a five-year project to get an answer” to an agricultural problem and then have the funding taken away in the third year.

Several witnesses mentioned regulations promulgated by the Obama administration as a deterrent to productivity and prosperity, and Roberts noted that he had sent President Barack Obama a letter last week listing proposed regulations that are causing problems.

Not all farm groups thought the hearing was complete. Kansas Farmers Union President Don Teske said he was disappointed his group was not invited to testify. The hearing was “politically correct” from Roberts' point of view, Teske said. But he added that a lot of the testimony delivered by other groups on crop issues “wasn't that far off."

The hearing was marked by Roberts’ usual good humor, but Stabenow did her part too.

“I eat a bing cherry every morning with a glass of ethanol,” Roberts said. But Stabenow told him that he should add some blueberries, which are another of Michigan’s most important crops.