Pelosi Says Agreement Reached With White House on Spending Bill -- 3rd Update
September 22 2020 - 10:00PM
Dow Jones News
By Kristina Peterson and Lindsay Wise
WASHINGTON -- The House Tuesday night passed a short-term
spending bill keeping the government funded through Dec. 11, after
Democrats reached a deal with the White House over farm aid and
food assistance.
The bipartisan agreement between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.,
Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, reached just hours
before the vote, is expected to smooth the bill's passage in the
GOP-controlled Senate and avert a partial shutdown when the
government's funding expires next Thursday.
The bill passed in a 359-57 vote in the House. The Senate is
expected to vote on it this week, aides said.
The agreement between Mrs. Pelosi (D., Calif.) and Mr. Mnuchin
would add to the spending bill $21 billion sought by the White
House for the Commodity Credit Corp., or CCC, a Depression-era
program designed to stabilize farm incomes that permits borrowing
as much as $30 billion from the Treasury to finance its activities.
The agreement prohibits any payments from going to fossil fuel
refiners and importers, a concern of Democrats, and includes
roughly $8 billion in additional nutrition funding.
"Our main goal is to keep the government funded, and we're
optimistic the principles outlined here can get us there," a White
House official said.
Tuesday night's agreement restored provisions that lawmakers had
been discussing last week but got left out of the bill introduced
Monday. Republicans lauded the addition of farm-aid funds, while
Democrats highlighted the new food assistance for children and
families.
The spending bill "reflects bipartisan agreement and includes
nearly $8 billion in desperately needed nutrition assistance for
struggling Americans," House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman
Nita Lowey (D., N.Y.) said in a statement.
President Trump has tapped the CCC program to finance both trade
relief and coronavirus-related aid for farmers, a second round of
which he announced at a campaign rally in Wisconsin last week. But
the program has traditionally been used to send out payments
established under bipartisan farm bills, some of which the
Agriculture Department had said could be subject to delays as soon
as October.
Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Mnuchin also agreed to add $8 billion in
nutrition assistance, the speaker said. That includes a one-year
extension of a program expiring at month's end that would provide
funding to families of school-age children to buy groceries,
replacing the free or reduced-price meals they would have received
at school. They also expanded the program to include children at
child-care centers affected by the pandemic.
"We have reached an agreement with Republicans...to add nearly
$8 billion in desperately needed nutrition assistance for hungry
schoolchildren and families," Mrs. Pelosi said in a statement. "We
also increase accountability in the Commodity Credit Corporation,
preventing funds for farmers from being misused for a Big Oil
bailout."
Tuesday night's deal ended an intensifying partisan battle over
the farm aid. Democrats and Republicans had diverged this week in
their assessment of whether the CCC program would need to be shored
up early. The program's annual replenishment typically takes place
in November or December after the CCC submits financial forms and
is audited, according to the Congressional Research Service.
The Agriculture Department said that Covid-19 relief payments
pledged by the Trump administration had left the program with only
about $2 billion, and that it would be forced to prioritize which
farm-bill payments could be made starting in October. Republicans
and some Democrats said that any delays in payments could be
detrimental to farmers already under pressure from the coronavirus'
effect on the agricultural economy.
"They've been expecting these payments for a year," Rep. Mike
Conaway of Texas, the top Republican on the House Agriculture
Committee, said Tuesday. "They get them every year in October, just
like clockwork. This year should be no different."
Democrats said that the Agriculture Department chose to swiftly
transfer Covid-19 relief funds out of CCC and into Agriculture
Secretary Sonny Perdue's office even before beginning to take
applications and without factoring in coming farm-bill payments.
The Agriculture Department said it had disbursed previous Covid-19
relief payments from Mr. Perdue's office and had to handle the
recently announced relief funds the same way, resulting in a
drawdown of the CCC.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate
Agriculture Committee, said Monday that Congress had already
provided the Agriculture Department enough funding for it to send
out October payments, and that it would be reimbursed in
November.
"If there are additional needs, the [agriculture] secretary has
tremendous flexibility to transfer unspent funds to fully fund
farm-bill programs," Ms. Stabenow said.
The Farm Bureau estimated last week that once early October
payments have been sent, the CCC program could be exhausted by
November.
Jesse Newman contributed to this article.
Write to Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com and
Lindsay Wise at lindsay.wise@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 22, 2020 21:45 ET (01:45 GMT)
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