The Government Didn't Shut Down, And That's Good News For The Farm Bill

Government shutdown averted: Senate approves 47-day stopgap bill. In a last-minute effort to prevent a government shutdown, President Joe Biden signed into a law a stopgap measure that funds the gov’t for an additional 47 days, through Nov. 17. For agriculture, it means work on a new farm bill can continue. 

The Senate, following a strong push from House Democrats, approved the measure in a lopsided vote. This eleventh-hour decision ensures the continuation of various government services and the payment of federal employees, at least temporarily. However, lawmakers still need to finalize a permanent budget appropriation plan to address the nation's financial needs.

What Now? Impacts on the Farm Bill

With the government funding in place for now, work on a new farm bill can continue, with the same questions (timing, funding, Title 1 reform, etc.) still being unanswered. 

Work and votes on fiscal year 2024 appropriations bills (and amendments) will now be a focal point, with contentious views on both sides of the political aisle and chambers.

Key Highlights from the Government Funding Vote:

• The Senate's vote of 88-9 late Saturday evening successfully averted a potential government shutdown, which would have had far-reaching consequences and was scheduled to begin at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Sunday.
   

• Earlier on Saturday, the House passed the bill with a strong majority, voting 335-91. The breakdown of the House vote revealed support from Democrats (209-1) and a mix of Republicans (126-90). 

• Notably, the bill did not include funding for military aid to Ukraine, a matter of contention for some Democrats and Republicans.

• Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) expressed their intent to reinstate funding for Ukraine in the final budget negotiations.

• Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), the only Democrat to vote against the bill, said he did so because it did not include aid to Ukraine. He called it “a victory for Putin and Putin sympathizers everywhere

• The continuing resolution (CR) funds the government at current spending levels through Nov. 17. 

• The CR provides $16 billion in disaster relief.

• It does not include any funding for Ukraine - which the White House and Democrats sought. Democrats didn’t want to be accused of putting aid for Ukraine ahead of keeping the government open. The White House had requested $20.6 billion from Congress to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.

• The measure does not include any funding for border protection. 

• Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the majority leader, said Saturday that his party would restart the appropriations process on Monday and continue to push for border security restrictions and spending cuts until the Nov. 17 deadline. “Believe me, this is not the end. This is the beginning of our continued fight to secure our border, to get government spending under control, and to get our economy back on track,” he said.

• “If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it. There has to be an adult in the room,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Saturday at a news conference after the House passed the bill.

• Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has for weeks threatened to make a motion to oust McCarthy if he put a “clean” CR on the floor, and been the most vocal opponent of any kind of stopgap measure. But ahead of the vote on Saturday, Gaetz indicated that such a move was not imminent, telling reporters he was focused on averting a shutdown by advancing full-year appropriations bills. Gaetz scoffed at McCarthy's remarks, telling reporters later that day "there's nothing about delaying this process that is being the adult in the room." Gaetz said on CNN's State of the Union that he plans to file a motion this week to overthrow McCarthy. "I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week. I think we need to rip off the band aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy," Gaetz told CNN's Jake Tapper. Because Republicans have only a slim majority in the House, only a handful of Republicans would have to back Gaetz’s motion for it to be successful — as long as Democrats vote with them. The minority party would generally be expected to back such a motion, since Democrats would prefer one of their own — Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) — as Speaker.  “That’s nothing new, he’s tried to do that from the moment I ran for office,” McCarthy said in an interview on CBS News Face the Nation.

Background: 

House Democrats largely supported the resolution proposed by the GOP, despite its omission of funding for Ukrainian military aid. The budget crisis was triggered by the far-right (rebels/renegades) Freedom Caucus within the GOP, which insisted on significant funding cuts and engaged in a public dispute with their own Speaker. If a shutdown had occurred, it would have been the first in nearly four years, leaving tens of thousands of federal employees on unpaid leave. The Department of the Interior had also announced plans to close most National Parks and Monuments during a shutdown, while various public services, such as public health inspections and small business loans, would have been put on hold.

Members of the Freedom Caucus expressed frustration on social media following their defeat, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) stating she wouldn't fund a government with a "weaponized Department of Justice" that prosecutes President Trump, pro-life protesters, and perceived political enemies. In response, Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)  taunted the Caucus after the bill's passage, emphasizing that people would receive paychecks despite their objections.

Did USDA Put Politics in Government Contingency Plans?

USDA's updated contingency plans, released late Friday afternoon, included a shift under the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) that shifted the Market News function from being an excepted operation in the August 2020 plan due to its importance to the agriculture industry, to now being activity that would not take place in the event of a shutdown. Link to updated USDA plans. 

Both the August 2020 and updated contingency plan have a section under AMS on the impacts of a shutdown. AMS noted that no Market News means that buyers and sellers would be “unable to determine market value of an agricultural commodity being traded, creating uncertainty in the market about market trends and reluctance to move products, particularly livestock, to market.” 

The document also contained a potentially politically motivated statement that echoes an often-used comment from the Biden administration: the ”brunt of the impact will be most keenly felt by producers, growers, and other small farmers; most affected will be the small farmers who market their commodities through formula arrangements, where the determination of price is based on published data.”

HUGE change for FSA

The Farm Service Agency (FSA) August 2020 contingency plan lists several operations that will continue, with some of them including Market Assistance Loans; provision of new Direct and Guaranteed Farm Operating Loans and servicing those loans; emergency loans; Farm Storage Facility Loans; servicing existing Conservation Reserve Program contracts but no new signups can be made; Dairy Margin Coverage; sugar Price Support Loans, continued implementation of the 2018 Farm Bill, including Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage efforts; Livestock Forage Disaster and presumably other emergency aid programs.

Action on the National Organic Certification Cost-Share Program Would Halt

However, under the UPDATED contingency plan that finally became available this morning after an issue kept the document from being available over the weekend, “FSA employees will cease all program delivery activities.” If a shutdown continues past 10 days, the plan said that one farm loan employee per service center will be on call in order to complete certain loan processing items in order to protect the security interest of the government. “This will not include any new loan processing,” the plan stated.

The package noted that those paid with Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding who oversee policy development and program activities under IRA Section 22006 “will continue their work to the extent feasible, up to application approval during the first two weeks of a lapse in appropriation.” The plan also indicated that during the first two weeks of a shutdown would include “review and processing of distressed borrower payments up to application approval.” A shutdown longer than two weeks would prompted officials to reevaluate the contingency plan “to consider whether it is appropriate to fund additional staff or to add excepted staff necessary to support the funded activity, to potentially include payment processing.”