Agri-Pulse Open Mic Interview: House Ag Ranking Member Glenn "GT" Thompson, R-Pa.

(Agri-Pulse) This week’s Open Mic guest is House Ag Ranking Member Glenn “GT” Thompson. At last week's Farm Progress Show, Thompson offered thoughts on crafting a 2023 farm bill including an opportunity to chair the committee if the GOP wins a majority in the November midterms. The Pennsylvania 15th district representative is determined to see the committee do the work to write new farm policy with full committee hearings in Washington and across the country. Thompson favors investigating a shift to margin coverage for commodity programs and supports programs for small and beginning farmers as well as ag businesses. Thompson is critical of a “politically motivated” EPA and favors renewable liquid fuels over mandates for electric vehicles. LISTEN

Excerpt from DTN Progressive Farmer: Regardless, the country is again looking at a divided government going forward, said Randy Russell, a lobbyist for several agricultural interests. "It seems like here we go again. It's amazing we find ourselves in this situation."

Summing up the state of Congress, "This election made everything clear as mud, as far as I can tell," said former Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, a Democrat and former chairman of the House Agriculture Committee.

Peterson and Russell spoke Wednesday on a newsmaker event hosted by North American Agricultural Journalists.

A narrow House majority for Republicans could help bring together a farm bill if Republicans are willing to work across the aisle to "help bring this thing together," Peterson said.

Peterson later added that agricultural lawmakers "are not necessarily polarized or partisan," but the last couple of farm bills have been difficult because of a lack of agreement on how to handle nutrition programs. A tight majority might lead Rep. Glenn "GT" Thompson, R-Pa., the expected House Agriculture Committee chairman, to negotiate some guidelines on funding for SNAP. Peterson noted Democrats may be open to making some changes in food-aid oversight. Peterson said his advice to Thompson and GOP leaders is to figure out what Democrats "need" on nutrition. "Make an agreement on that before you start the whole process."

"There have been problems, and one of the problems is what happened in Minnesota where you had a bunch of people that walked off with $250 million on the system because there weren't the right kind of guardrails around it," Peterson said. "And that's something that could be worked on."

Federal authorities in Minnesota have charged 49 people with embezzling funds from a federal food-aid program created during the pandemic.

Peterson added he also thinks agricultural leaders and nutrition groups need to re-establish the coalition from those two sides that has helped foster farm bill negotiations in the past.

Russell added that he believes Thompson will also want to get a farm bill passed while he sits in the chairman's seat.

Eyes will be on GOP groups such as the Freedom Caucus and how they will wield their influence when the GOP brings major spending bills to the floor. Peterson also pointed to the plans laid out last summer by the Republican Study Committee -- which includes 160 or so House members -- to cut farm program spending along with other federal programs.

Tied to that, Peterson added he expects there will be more oversight and some House investigations into how USDA used the Commodity Credit Corp. (CCC) funds to pay for $2.8 billion in climate-smart agriculture grants. Lawmakers were not happy that they were not consulted more about that spending.

"In the House, you could see some investigations of that sort of stuff that could complicate the farm bill situation if that happens," Peterson said.

GOP lawmakers did not complain when the Trump administration spent more than $50 billion over three years in CCC funds for Market Facilitation Program (MFP) and Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) payments.

"They were all in favor of it when Trump was doing it," Peterson said. He added administrations from both parties have used CCC as a "spigot" over time. "It's pretty hard for them to complain when Trump was doing it."

Russell said the CCC "provides the agriculture secretary broad authority" on spending funds to support for production agriculture. He also noted on the climate-smart programs there were $19 billion in requests and $8 billion contributed by the private sector to match the USDA funds.

"There is a pattern over time where administrations, depending on what their priorities are and what the economic circumstances are, we use the Commodity Credit Corp. for things that aren't specifically authorized," Russell said.

Russell and Peterson agreed Congress could at least discuss next year putting more controls on how CCC funds are used.

In the House, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., co-sponsored the Growing Climate Solutions Act. That bill passed the Senate with 92 votes but has stalled in the House Agriculture Committee. Russell said he expects Spanberger and Bacon will push to get that bill advanced during the lame-duck session.

"If we're going to support the growth of private carbon markets, getting the Growing Climate Solutions Act passes and enacted is a very positive step to getting third-party verifiers out in the market so that we certify and verify credits and hopefully that will get done," Russell said. READ MORE

Excerpt from AgWeb: If Republicans gain control of the House that will shift the leadership of the House Ag Committee to Pennsylvania's G.T. Thompson. But election watchers like Jessica Schulken, Principal, with The Russell Group says with such a narrow majority it will make compromise the key for writing a new farm bill because Thompson can't assume he'll have all the Republican votes he'll need to pass the legislation. "He’ll then need to look at his ranking member Mr. Scott and cut a deal with him and so what you will likely see is maybe a little more of a compromise farm bill because there will have to be some more Democratic involvement than there may have been otherwise." But she says Thompson has different priorities than Scott with less emphasis on research and climate smart ag and more on the farm safety net and overall spending cuts.

Schulken says Senate control is still up for grabs based on three key races, but it will be a slim margin either way. "In the Senate, you know it takes 60 votes to pass anything. So, what you’ll see come out of the Senate, sort of across the board is a more bi-partisan bill than what you’ll see in the House."

She says if Democrat Debbie Stabenow retains leadership, she’ll defend IRA funding. But even if Republican John Boozman takes over, the focus will be on the nutrition title of the farm bill, which has seen rapidly rising costs since the 2018 bill. According to Schulken, "Overall over a 20 to 25% increase to SNAP costs, so there’s certainly going to be pretty significant looks at if there’s a way to reign any of those in." In fact, Schulken expects whoever controls Congress to try to slow the runaway spending that starting during COVID, which will impact all ag programs.

The Senate Ag Committee isn’t missing a beat with leaders Stabenow and Boozman announcing a series of hearings on the farm bill starting next week. So, they’ll be getting right to work even though who's in the majority won’t be known until early next month. READ MORE