Lewis-Burke Associates LLC – May 25, 2011
On May 24, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture and Rural Development approved its version of the fiscal year (FY) 2012 appropriations bill which funds the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and related agencies. Reflecting House Republicans’ desire to reduce domestic discretionary spending, the bill would provide a total of $17.2 billion in discretionary dollars, a figure $2.7 billion below the FY 2011 enacted level and more than $5 billion below the President’s FY 2012 request. The bill provides another $108.2 billion in mandatory funding for programs including food stamps, child nutrition programs, federal crop insurance, and commodity price stabilization activities. Mandatory programs accounted for almost 87 percent of total funding provided by the bill and increased by 3 percent from the FY 2011 amount.
Despite statements by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY) and Subcommittee Chairman Jack Kingston (R-GA) that protecting research was a priority in the bill, both internal USDA research programs through the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and extramural programs administered by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) would experience significant reductions under the proposed bill. A total of $2.2 billion would be provided for agricultural research, which is almost 14 percent below both the FY 2011 level and the President’s request. Within this amount, ARS would see a decrease of 12 percent below the FY 2011 enacted level while NIFA would be reduced by 16 percent. NIFA’s competitive grants program, the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI), would receive $225 million under the House proposal, which represents a sizeable decrease below both the FY 2011 enacted level and the President’s FY 2012 request. The agricultural research community will need to keep up pressure on appropriators to sustain funding for AFRI, which the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has advocated for growing closer to its authorized level of $700 million, following the departure of NIFA Director and competitive research champion Roger Beachy earlier this month.
The Committee also called out formula funds for land-grant colleges and universities as a priority in the proposed bill. Funds administered through both the Hatch Act and the Smith-Lever Act would see reductions slightly below the bill’s total spending reduction of 13.4 percent from the FY 2011 amount. However, the Hatch Act would be one of the only research programs increased above the President’s FY 2012 request, seeing a bump of about 2 percent. While the Committee’s stated commitment to agricultural research is positive for universities and other research institutions, competing priorities and deep cuts to other areas with broad constituencies will necessitate a continued effort to communicate the importance of research to Members of Congress throughout the FY 2012 appropriations process.
Beyond research, food safety programs would receive a total of $972.7 million, which is 3 percent below the FY 2011 level and about 4 percent below the President’s request. This amount is slightly below the FY 2011 level and would be used to continue meat, poultry, and egg product testing and inspections. In addition, Chairmen Rodgers and Kingston called out rural development programs as another continuing priority for the Committee, and would dedicate approximately $2 billion to programs including rural housing loans, rural housing subsidies, rural business loans, and rural water projects.
Following its adoption by the Subcommittee via voice vote, the bill now proceeds to the full Appropriations Committee where it is scheduled to be marked up on May 31. Timing for movement on a Senate companion remains unclear, but is expected that total discretionary spending in that version of the bill will be higher than the $17.25 billion provided by the House.