Nussle Calls for New Farm Bill

March 15, 2001

House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-IA) Wednesday called on Congress to write a new farm bill this year and not wait until the 1996 law expires in 2002. Congress should "debate immediately," he said, and approve a bill before the year is out. He also called on Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman to clean up the "mess" at USDA to satisfy farmer complaints about costly regulations and slow program benefits.

Nussle's comments came at a hearing on the agriculture budget where Rep. Charles Stenholm (D-TX) called for "permanently increasing" the allocation for agriculture instead of relying on ad hoc assistance that has cost the government more than $18 billion over the last three years. "Ad hoc assistance is, by its very nature, unpredictable," Stenholm said.

Another reason for a permanent increase, he added, "is the recognition of the need for a more predictable and disciplined approach to budgeting." Congress has shown a will to provide necessary assistance "when existing programs are inadequate, but emergency waivers of the budget act have led to greater spending than might otherwise have occurred."

Veneman, however, said farmers would benefit from President Bush's tax policies if they were approved by Congress, particularly tax relief. "Farmers especially will benefit from the elimination of the estate tax and from the proposed establishment of tax-deferred risk management accounts," she said.

If more emergencies develop, she added, Bush has proposed a contingency fund of nearly a trillion dollars "for use in dealing with unexpected and difficult to predict needs or necessary programmatic reforms which may emerge in the future and for which adequate resources cannot be readily found by reforming other activities."

Assistance to farmers, she said, would be "one of the many potential uses for this contingency reserve."

Veneman declined to specify how much farm spending should increase or whether a new farm bill should be written this year, THE WASHINGTON POST reported.