News : New year, same old shutdown showdown

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

New year, same old shutdown showdown

Jan 02, 2024

QUICK FIX

— Congress will return next week facing a familiar set of problems, including a looming government shutdown less than two weeks away.

— ICYMI: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is staring down a food assistance problem in Florida and predominantly Hispanic GOP districts.

— A leading baby formula manufacturer recalled a specialty formula over concerns of bacterial contamination.

HAPPY TUESDAY, Jan. 2. I’m your host, Garrett Downs. Welcome back to Morning Ag, and happy New Year! Remember when we were all saying the “2023 farm bill?” That’s so last year. As always, send your hot tips to gdowns@politico.com and @_garrettdowns and follow us at @Morning_Ag.

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Driving the day

NEW SESSION, SAME ISSUES: Congress will start the new year next week on an urgent note. Lawmakers will, once again, have less than 10 working days to avert a shutdown in some of the federal government’s agencies, including the Agriculture Department.

That’s due to the last stopgap resolution’s “laddered” approach, which created two separate deadlines for two groups of federal agencies, the first of which includes USDA and will expire on Jan. 19. The second tranche will expire on Feb. 2.

The Ag-FDA problems are the same: The Senate last year passed its version of the bill to fund the USDA and Food and Drug Administration. The House’s bill failed on the floor after centrist Republicans revolted over a rider banning mail delivery of the abortion pill mifepristone and farm-state Republicans voted against the bill’s deep cuts to agriculture programs. House Republican appropriators initially undercut the debt ceiling deal that laid out toplines for spending bills, sparking Democratic anger.

At the end of last year, Republican lawmakers in the House were not optimistic the Ag-FDA bill could ever be redeemed in the House, even after the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus walked back their steepest demands for undercutting the debt accord.

“As far as the top line, I’d want to see how they apply it. … Could I live by the agreement that I voted for, [the Fiscal Responsibility Act]? Certainly. But mifepristone is a non-starter,” centrist New York Republican Marc Molinaro told your host before the holiday break.

Weighing the options: It doesn’t seem likely House Republicans will be able to resolve the impasse on Ag-FDA, given the thorniness of abortion politics. Lawmakers also left Washington without a bicameral agreement on top-line spending for all bills, a critical prerequisite to any final deal.

One option is a full-year continuing resolution to extend the fiscal year 2023 spending bills until Sept. 30 of this year. Former House Ag Chair Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) has suggested that may be an easier sell in the House. The Senate, however, seems fiercely opposed. The move would also trigger across-the-board cuts agreed to in the debt ceiling deal.

As our Caitlin Emma and Jennifer Scholtes report, there are other options. Lawmakers normally package all 12 spending bills together and pass them quickly in what's known as an omnibus. But some members have lost patience with using that type of broad funding vehicle, which means leaders might need to find another piecemeal way to pass spending bills — taking up more time they don't have.

Lawmakers could try to break the bills into two smaller bundles, or “minibuses,” to fund each of the agencies before their separate expiration dates. But that’s more time-consuming than an omnibus. The last time lawmakers didn’t use the omnibus approach, there was a record-breaking partial government shutdown under former President Donald Trump.

FOOD AID FIGHT AHEAD

ICYMI: JOHNSON’S FLORIDA SNAP PROBLEM: House Republican plans to drastically shrink federal food assistance would disproportionately hit their own Hispanic constituents, just as the GOP is trying to build on recent gains with the key voting bloc ahead of 2024, a POLITICO analysis by Meredith Lee Hill, Marissa Martinez and Paroma Soni found.

The details: Three GOP districts in south Florida, along with a handful of other districts with Hispanic majorities, would be among the hardest hit by new restrictions to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Though the members who hold those seats aren’t the most at-risk in the 2024 election, they are wary to support additional cuts, presenting a wrinkle for Johnson’s plans to balance the disparate demands of his conference in next year’s farm bill reauthorization fight and his razor-thin majority.

A broad swath of House Republicans are pushing for additional work requirements for those receiving the food benefits. One proposal would extend those work stipulations for mothers of children over the age of 7 years old. A smaller contingent of GOP hardliners also want to cut SNAP spending back to pre-pandemic levels, among other proposals.

The political upshot: Supporters of new work requirements note those proposals are, generally, popular with voters.

But the effects would be felt acutely in six House Republican districts where more than 20 percent of households receive SNAP benefits. Five of those six districts are majority-Hispanic. Three are in the Miami area, represented by María Elvira Salazar, Carlos Giménez and Mario Díaz-Balart, where Republicans are trying to build on recent gains.

In a recent private meeting with Johnson, Rep. David Valadao, a vulnerable Republican whose district in California’s Central Valley is one of the six Hispanic-majority GOP seats where more than 20 percent of households receive SNAP benefits, raised concerns with the speaker about Republicans pursuing too drastic food aid restrictions this Congress, according to a GOP lawmaker who was granted anonymity to discuss internal conference discussions.

A spokesperson for Valadao said the representative “has concerns about the impacts that any additional restrictions to SNAP would have on his district, where nearly one in four people rely on some form of state or federal food assistance.”

Food

NEW FORMULA RECALL: Baby formula maker Reckitt/Mead Johnson Nutrition, the maker of Enfamil, voluntarily recalled select batches of Nutramigen powder, a specialty infant formula for babies allergic to cow’s milk.

The details: The company said it issued the recall due to potential Cronobacter sakazakii contamination in a product sampled outside of the U.S. Cronobacter bacteria can cause deadly illness in infants.

The company specifically recalled 12.6-ounce and 19.8-ounce containers, which were manufactured in June 2023 and distributed primarily in June, July and August 2023. It added that due to limited remaining stock, the company believes that most of the recalled formula has been consumed.

As of the recall, there have been no adverse effects or illnesses reported.

That sounds familiar: Cronobacter sakazakii is the same contaminant that sparked a recall and shutdown of an Abbott Nutrition facility in 2022 that caused a nationwide infant formula shortage. The episode also put heavy scrutiny on the FDA, which is in the process of reorganizing its foods division.

Row Crops

— A New York billionaire who bought up farmland wants to change farming. (The Colorado Sun)

— Mississippi is losing its middle-class farmers. (Mississippi Today)

— The Humane Society of the United States celebrated Proposition 12 taking effect in California.

THAT’S ALL FOR MA! Drop us a line: gdowns@politico.com, meredithlee@politico.com, marciabrown@politico.com, mmartinez@politico.com, abehsudi@politico.com and ecadei@politico.com.