News: Inside the next funding fight

Monday, March 25, 2024

Inside the next funding fight

Mar 25, 2024

With help from James Bikales

QUICK FIX

— With the fiscal 2024 funding fight over, top Democratic appropriators are wary that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children will become a major fight once again ahead of the November elections.

— The biofuels industry is worried about the Biden administration’s rollout of sustainable aviation fuel. A top Agriculture Department official tried to alleviate those fears in an interview with MA.

— USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small will be in Ohio today with Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), a House Ag Committee member.

HAPPY MONDAY, MARCH 25. We’re your hosts, Garrett Downs and Meredith Lee Hill. Send tips to gdowns@politico.com and meredithlee@politico.com, and follow us at @Morning_Ag.

Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories.

Driving the day

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., left, and Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-Ga., center, talk to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., seated right, the ranking member on House Appropriations Committee, as the panel works on fiscal 2024 spending bills.

Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) warned WIC could once again be a GOP target for cuts in fiscal year 2025. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

FY 2025 FUNDING FIGHT: Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations Ag-FDA subcommittee, told MA he “would not be at all surprised” if the WIC nutrition program for low-income moms and babies becomes another fight in the FY 2025 Ag-FDA funding bill, along with a host of other issues.

You’ll remember: Speaker Mike Johnson pushed to use WIC as “leverage” in the spending talks, a Republican lawmaker told Meredith at the time.

“The personnel are still the same,” Bishop said. “I think the issues that a handful of folks on the other side are raising are probably still the same.”

Bishop added it was clear in the most recent spending fight that “the appetite” among the majority of lawmakers “was not for those extreme MAGA policies,” with nearly every so-called poison pill stripped from the funding package.

WIC warnings: The coalition of groups that came together to defend WIC from GOP cuts in the recent funding battle has new warnings for House Republicans: don’t try it again.

House Republicans in part pushed to roll back the enhanced fruit and vegetable benefit for WIC, which put many vulnerable Republicans and Johnson in the crosshairs of powerful agriculture groups.

“Quite honestly the fact that it was even ever a discussion, is a bit disheartening given that 1 in 10 Americans eat the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables every day,” Cathy Burns, who heads the International Fresh Produce Association, told MA.

Burns said, if given the chance, she’d tell hardline House Republicans who may be eyeing another attempt to cut WIC in the upcoming FY 2025 funding fight that funding WIC “isn't just a nice to do.”

WIC provides a return both in terms of the health benefits to millions of low-income moms and babies, and more than $1.3 billion in sales for farmers, Burns added.

FNS TURNOVER: Speaking of USDA’s nutrition programs, at least five top career staff are retiring from the department’s Food and Nutrition Service, Meredith scooped last week.

It’s a significant exodus of senior career officials with immense institutional knowledge.

BIOFUELS FIGHT

The sun rises over an airplane

The Biden administration is weighing how it will view crop-based sources of sustainable aviation fuel. | Kevin Dietsch/AFP via Getty Images

BIOFUELS FRET OVER SAF: Major biofuels and farming groups urged the Biden administration in a letter last week to quickly issue its delayed modeling update that will determine whether agricultural feedstocks qualify for the sustainable aviation fuel tax credit.

They also expressed concern that the updated GREET model’s accounting of sustainable farming practices would make it more difficult for ethanol to qualify for the credit.

What they’re saying: The groups cautioned the administration against “contradictory changes to GREET that would stack unwarranted penalties on agricultural feedstocks, cut rural America out of a promising green energy market, and undermine any realistic path to achieving U.S. SAF goals.”

Remember: The Biden administration was supposed to release the updated GREET model on March 1, but blew past that deadline. The administration is trying to ensure that climate-smart agriculture is accounted for in determining emissions reductions from SAF.

What USDA is saying: Robert Bonnie, the undersecretary for farm production and conservation at USDA, recently tried to allay concerns over the GREET model.

“That effort is all around creating a domestic pathway and looking for ways that U.S. agriculture can participate,” Bonnie said. “It involves making sure you've got the accounting right with respect to things like indirect land use and other issues, and that you can think about ways you can account for climate-smart practices.”

THE RURAL VOTE 2024

Xochitl Torres Small.

USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

USDA NO. 2 TO OHIO: USDA Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small will join Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) in Cleveland today for two events.

Torres Small will visit the Ben Franklin School Community Garden and the Ohio Aerospace Institute’s precision urban agriculture initiative, which is working on incorporating technology like drones into urban agriculture.

What’s happening: Torres Small and Brown will tour the community garden and OAI, then hold a roundtable at OAI with local urban farmers and agriculture stakeholders.

The event marks the latest dispatch of a high-ranking Biden administration official to a state with key 2024 election ramifications. President Joe Biden lost Ohio in the 2020 election to former President Donald Trump, who also carried the state in 2016. But the Rust Belt is still key to Biden’s reelection bid in 2024, as our Gavin Bade reported last week.

What they’re saying: Brown lauded the Biden administration’s USDA and Torres Small’s visit.

“The Biden-Harris Administration believes in urban agriculture and supporting Black farmers, and so do I,” Brown said in a statement. “This is an important opportunity to connect local urban farmers and stakeholders with one of our nation’s top agriculture officials and have an important conversation about growing the next generation of urban farmers.”

Row Crops

— The brutality of sugar. (The New York Times)

— Chick-fil-A rolls back its commitment to antibiotic-free chicken. (Reuters)

— Why is the FBI probing some of Napa Valley’s fanciest wineries? (Los Angeles Times)

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.