President Barack Obama on Monday proposed a $4.1 trillion spending plan for fiscal year 2017. The spending proposal stayed within the confines of an agreement reached between the White House and Congress last year that lifted mandatory “sequestration” cuts on both defense and domestic spending.
The budget for the fiscal year beginning on October 1 is unlikely to be passed by the Republican-controlled Congress.
Of particular importance to the industry:
Department of Agriculture: the president’s budget requests $155,351,000,000 for USDA including $24.2 billion in discretionary spending, and represents a reduction of $9 billion from the FY16 budget request and on par with 2013 budget request levels.
- $1.2B for the Agricultural Marketing Service, an increase of $70M from FY16 request
- $1.286B for the Agricultural Research Service, a decrease of $100M from FY16 request
- $1.2B for research in climate change resilience and vulnerability, pollinator health, agricultural microbiomes, responding to antimicrobial resistance, as well as research on foreign animal diseases, soil health, avian influenza, and for safe and abundant water supplies
- $1.196B for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a $17M increase from FY16 request
- $1.04B for the Food Safety Inspection Service (including a proposed user fee of $4M), a $15M increase from FY16 request
- $1.5B for Foreign Agricultural Service, a $358M decease from FY16 request ($27.5 million for Foreign Market Development, $172.8 million for Market Access Program)
- $43M for Grain Inspection Packers and Stockyards Administration, a $3M increase from FY16 request
- $177M for the National Agricultural Statistics Service, an increase of $9M from FY16 request
Food and Drug Administration: The Obama administration’s fiscal year 2017 budget proposal for the Food and Drug Administration seeks $2.74 billion in appropriations from Congress, a slight increase over the 2016 level.
For specific program activities, the budget requests $492 million for human drugs (in congressional funding, the same as the current year. Biologics work at the agency would receive about $215 million from Congress, also the same as FY 2016.
Additionally, the president is renewing a proposal that would cut premium subsidies paid to farmers by 10 percent from the FY2016 funded levels. That would cut the crop insurance program’s total cost from $7.9 billion to $7.6 billion. The crop insurance cuts would encourage fewer farmers to buy into the program and would reduce the deficit by $18 billion over the next 10 years, according to the proposal.
The FY 2017 request covers the period from October 1, 2016, through September 30, 2017. The budget now goes to both houses of Congress for consideration. House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers has said he intends to produce bills that abide by the budget caps set into place by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015—a total of $1.070 trillion in discretionary spending.
