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Updated April 26, 2018
Farm Bill Primer: Budget Issues
Farm Bills from a Budget Perspective
Assistance Program ($664 billion). The remaining $203
billion baseline is for agricultural programs, mostly in crop
Congress may soon consider a new farm bill, because the
insurance, farm commodity programs, and conservation.
2014 farm bill (P.L. 113-79) generally expires in FY2018.
Other titles of the farm bill contribute less than 1% of the
From a budgetary perspective, many programs are assumed
baseline, some of which are funded primarily with
to continue beyond the end of the farm bill, and that
discretionary spending.
provides funding for reauthorization, reallocation to other
programs, or offsets for deficit reduction.
This is the benchmark of available funding from which the
House and the Senate may write bills for a new farm bill in
There are two ways to provide farm bill funding:
2018. Figure 1 shows the current CBO baseline for farm
bill programs over the next 10 years. Figure 2 illustrates
1. Mandatory spending. A farm bill authorizes
the same baseline on an annual basis. Table 1 adds detail at
outlays and pays for them with multiyear
the program level for the farm commodity programs,
budget estimates when the law is enacted.
conservation, trade, and miscellaneous titles.
Budget enforcement is through “PayGo”
budget rules and “baseline” projections.
Figure 1. Farm Bill Baseline for Mandatory Programs
2. Discretionary authorizations. A farm bill
10-year projected outlays, FY2019-FY2028, billions of dollars
sets the parameters for programs and
authorizes them to receive funding in
subsequent appropriations but does not
provide or assure actual funding. Budget
enforcement is through future appropriations
and budget resolutions.
Because mandatory programs often dominate farm bill
policy and the debate over the farm bill budget, the rest of
this document focuses on mandatory spending.
Importance of Baseline to the Farm Bill
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) develops the
budget baseline under various laws and follows the
supervision of the House and Senate Budget Committees.
The CBO baseline is a projection at a particular point in
time of future federal spending on mandatory programs
Source: CRS, using CBO April 2018 Baseline (unpublished).
under current law. The baseline is the benchmark against
which proposed changes in law are measured.
Figure 2. Farm Bill Baseline for FY2019-FY2028
Annual fiscal year projected outlays, billions of dollars
When a new bill is proposed that would affect mandatory
spending, the cost impact (score) is measured in relation to
the baseline. Changes that increase spending relative to the
baseline have a positive score; those that decrease spending
relative to the baseline have a negative score.
Most of the major farm bill provisions such as the farm
commodity programs and nutrition assistance have
baseline. However, 39 programs that were authorized in the
2014 farm bill with mandatory funding do not have a
continuing baseline (see CRS Report R44758, Farm Bill
Programs Without a Budget Baseline Beyond FY2018).
CBO’s April 2018 Baseline
The mandatory spending baseline for farm bill programs
contains $867 billion over FY2019-FY2028, 77% of which
is in the nutrition title for the Supplemental Nutrition
Source: CRS, using CBO April 2018 Baseline (unpublished).
https://crsreports.congress.gov