Agriculture and Related Agencies: FY2019 Appropriations

Summary

The Agriculture appropriations bill funds the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) except for the Forest Service. It also funds the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and—in even-numbered fiscal years—the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Agriculture appropriations include both mandatory and discretionary spending. Discretionary amounts, though, are the primary focus during the bill’s development, since mandatory amounts are generally set by authorizing laws such as the farm bill.

The largest discretionary spending items are the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); agricultural research; FDA; rural development; foreign food aid and trade; farm assistance programs; food safety inspection; conservation; and animal and plant health programs. The main mandatory spending items are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), child nutrition, crop insurance, and the farm commodity and conservation programs paid by the Commodity Credit Corporation.

For FY2019, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees reported Agriculture appropriations bills (H.R. 5961, S. 2976) in May 2018. Neither bill has gone to the floor.

The Trump Administration requested $17 billion for discretionary-funded accounts within the jurisdiction of Agriculture appropriations, which would be a reduction of $6.2 billion from FY2018 (-27%). In general, both the House-reported and Senate-reported bills reject most of the Administration’s proposed reductions.

The discretionary total of the House-reported bill is $23.23 billion, which would be $14 million less than enacted in FY2018 (-0.1%). The discretionary total of the Senate-reported bill is also $23.23 billion. However, the Senate bill’s total would be $229 million more than enacted in FY2018 (+1%) on a comparable basis that excludes the CFTC. The Senate-reported bill would provide about $250 million more than the House-passed bill on a comparable basis.

The primary changes at the agency level that comprise the differences between the bills and from FY2018 include the following: Both the House and Senate bills would increase FDA appropriations (+$308 million in the House bill; +$159 million in the Senate bill), though neither continues extra funding for the opioid crisis that was in the FY2018 appropriation. Both bills increase appropriations for animal and plant health programs (+$16 million to +$19 million). The House bill would provide more base funding for rural water and waste disposal (+$81 million), but none of the extra money that was provided separately in FY2018. The Senate bill would not change the base funding for rural water but continues $400 million of the extra funding from last year. For rural broadband, both the House and Senate bills would continue extra funding from a FY2018 pilot ($550 million in the House bill; $425 million in the Senate bill). The House bill would increase appropriations for agricultural research (+$79 million), and the Senate bill would increase Agricultural Research Service programming (+98 million) but would not provide any money for construction (-$141 million). Both bills provide less for WIC (-$175 million in the House bill, and -$25 million in the Senate bill), though the Senate bill has a larger rescission from prior-year WIC funds than does the House bill. The House bill would reduce base funding for the international Food for Peace program (-$100 million) and does not renew extra funding provided last year (-$116 million), while the Senate bill would keep it constant overall.

The appropriations also carries mandatory spending—largely determined in separate authorizing laws—that would total $122 billion. Thus, the overall total of the both bills is about $145 billion.

Both bills contain policy provisions affecting disaster programs, rural definitions, industrial hemp, animal products, nutrition programs, dietary guidelines, CFTC, and tobacco products.