The USDA spending bill President Biden just signed for the rest of this fiscal year limits the Ag Secretary’s discretion in spending funds from the Commodity Credit Corporation—USDA’s financing institution.
The Ag spending bill requires the Secretary to give Congress 15-days’ notice and spending details before transferring $100 million or more from the CCC.
The provision is based on the earlier “USDA Spending Accountability Act,” led by Republican Senators Roger Marshall, Mike Braun and Iowa’s Chuck Grassley.
“We should not have a slush fund that is outside of the appropriation process, that doesn’t give Congress control of the purse strings.”
Republicans charge the CCC’s been used for politically-driven pet projects. But Secretary Tom Vilsack sees it differently.
“The ARC payments and the PLC payments and the CRP payments, all come from the Commodity Credit Corporation. So, they’ve done it in the past.”
Citing legitimate CCC use to fund farm bills.. And Senate Ag Chair Debbie Stabenow pointed to Vilsack’s earlier ok of a bipartisan request to use CCC funds for trade promotion.
“A large part of that is already the way we fund the farm bill. So, it’s not that there’s additional.”
And the earlier GOP bill would use half its $8 billion estimated ten-year savings for market development and research, the other half for deficit reduction.
But Republicans criticize the CCC’s use for climate programs and other Democratic priorities and say even the Government Accountability Office has ruled USDA should have asked Congress first.
-NAFB