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| USRPA cosponsors agriculture industry event in DC: On Wednesday, Congress hosted its annual bipartisan Congressional Baseball Game for Charity at Nat’s Park in Washington, DC. USRPA, alongside a handful of other agricultural trade associations, sponsored a pre-game event that garnered lots of participation and engagement from the Hill and other working professionals within the DC agriculture policy bubble. USRPA’s own, Mollie Buckler, represented producers and the organization at the event, along with USRPA’s lobbying arm Cornerstone Government Affairs. |
| Senate Ag Committee releases reconciliation bill text: On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry released legislative text to contribute towards the Senate’s broader budget reconciliation package. At the beginning of the reconciliation process, Senate Ag was instructed to cut at least $1 billion from within the Committee’s jurisdiction, which was vastly different than the House Agriculture Committee’s instruction of $230 billion. Chairman John Boozman (R-AR) and the Committee market the bill as reining in runaway spending in the nutrition title while promoting fiscal responsibility and investing in rural America and America’s farm families. In the Senate’s version, the bill has a net savings total closer to $140 billion, whereas the House’s version meets their instruction of $230 billion in net savings. From the perspective of USRPA, the bill increases reference prices for Title I commodities, including long and medium grain rice, reforms payment limits, and bolsters funding for trade promotion programs. You can find the Senate Agriculture Committee’s complete legislative text here and a section-by-section summary here. House Appropriation delays Ag-FDA FY26 markup: On Wednesday, the full House Appropriations Committee convened to markup the Fiscal Year 2026 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Bill. This bill provides a discretionary spending total of $25.523 billion, $1.163 billion (4.2%) below the FY25 enacted level. Members engaged in hotly partisan debates regarding funding levels for rural infrastructure, the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the foreign influence on farming in the U.S. Republicans supported efforts for the federal government to assume more fiscally responsibility while simultaneously supporting rural communities access to broadband, water infrastructure, and affordable housing. Democrats criticized the spending cuts, arguing that the proposed cuts to rural infrastructure will harm farmers, vulnerable communities, and subside development. The Committee initially started the markup on Wednesday morning, recessed for the Congressional Baseball Game later in the afternoon, and then returned in the evening after the game to resume the rest of the markup. Despite all this, the Committee was unable to finish up the markup, with the FY26 Defense bill that was scheduled to markup before the full Committee on Thursday, the following day. While the Committee managed to get through a bulk of the amendments, a handful remain, and a continuation date has yet to be confirmed. You can find a copy of the bill text here and the report language here. Senate confirms Stephen Vaden as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture: On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Stephen Vaden to be the next Deputy Secretary of Agriculture along a 51-44 party vote. He will now head down to the U.S. Department of Agriculture where he will serve as Secretary Brooke Rollins’ number two in command. This vote comes two months after his nomination hearing before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Before this new role, he served as a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade and was at the USDA during President Trump’s first term as a general counsel. The Senate has yet to schedule confirmation votes for several other USDA nominees in the queue, such as Luke Linberg, Tyler Clarkson, and Dudley Hoskins., |
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