Agriculture and Related Agencies: FY2015 Appropriations

ISBN-13: 9781503006782 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 96 str.

Congressional Research Service

Opis

The Agriculture appropriations bill funds the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), except for the Forest Service. It includes the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and-in the House and in even-numbered enacted fiscal years-the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). FY2015 began under a 10-week continuing resolution (P.L. 113-164) that lasts until December 11, 2014. Accounts are funded at 99.9446% of their FY2014 amounts, and any conditions in the FY2014 appropriation continue to apply. The CR increases the Commodity Supplemental Food Program by $6 million, and allows the FDA to implement a newly authorized user fee. The CR provides a total of $20.789 billion for discretionary Agriculture appropriations, which is within 0.5% of the totals proposed by the House and Senate-reported bills. For FY2015, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees reported their Agriculture appropriations bills (H.R. 4800 and S. 2389) in May 2014-the earliest joint action in years. The House considered H.R. 4800 on the floor on June 11, procedurally read through most of the bill, and adopted several amendments. The bill was left unfinished when floor action was suspended due to House Whip leadership changes. The Senate considered a minibus appropriations bill on June 19 that included the Agriculture bill. But Senate consideration quickly stopped over a disagreement about procedures for amendments. Thus both bills remain unfinished at the chamber level, although each was considered for a time on the respective chamber floor. The discretionary target for the FY2015 Agriculture appropriations bill in the House is $20.880 billion (the "302(b) allocation"), the same as for FY2014. The Senate's allocation is $20.575 billion, lower than the House bill in part due to the absence of CFTC in the Senate's jurisdiction. In terms of budget amounts, both the House- and Senate-reported bills generally make small discretionary changes compared with FY2014. The Senate bill includes $143 million of emergency conservation and forestry spending, of which $100 million is offset by a disaster declaration. If the House and Senate bills are made comparable by excluding CFTC from the House bill, the Senate bill spends $13 million more than the House bill if the disaster designation is not counted, but officially is $87 million less than the House total with the disaster designation. The House bill increases the Agricultural Research Service by $155 million for construction. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is reduced by $92 million in both the House and Senate bills. Most other agencies would receive small increases in both bills that are facilitated by higher offsets in "scorekeeping adjustments." Mandatory spending in the reported bills totals $121.6 billion, which is $3 billion less than FY2014 mostly due to less farm program spending following the 2014 farm bill. Mandatory spending on child nutrition programs increases by $1.2 billion (+6%) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) appropriations remain nearly constant at about $82.2 billion. Notable policy riders affecting the Agriculture appropriation bill this year include limitations on implementing nutrition standards for the school meals programs (particularly a waiver in the House-reported bill) and provisions in both bills to prevent USDA from excluding white potatoes from the WIC program. Also, the House bill would restrict USDA from implementing some rules about livestock and poultry marketing practices and some country-of-origin labeling regulations. Both bills continue a provision to prevent federal inspection of horse slaughter facilities, and a House floor amendment was adopted for local and regional international food aid purchases.

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