Grassley Outlines Payment Limits Amendment


            WASHINGTON – Senator Chuck Grassley today provided specifics on an amendment to put a hard cap on farm payments that he will offer with Senator Byron Dorgan during the farm bill debate. 

 

            “This is real reform, not some fig leaf that leaves loopholes you can drive a truck through,” Grassley said.  “The last time we brought this up many of our colleagues said they agreed with what we were trying to do.  But, they said that real reform needed to be done in the farm bill.  I say to my colleagues who said to wait --- here is your chance.”

 

Grassley also said that the Dorgan/Grassley amendment is the only amendment that preserves the farm safety net while putting a hard cap on all three program payments while: direct payments, countercyclical and average crop revenue payments, and marketing loan gains and loan deficiency payments.

 

The amendment saves $513 million over the five year span of the farm bill.  The savings from the amendment will be directly re-invested to help rural Americans including producers and farmers, small business owners, conservationists, and low-income people including seniors and children. 

 

Specifically, the amendment will put money in Beginning Farmer and Rancher Programs, the Rural Micro-enterprise Program, the Organic Cost Share Program, the Farmers Market Promotion Program, the Grassland Reserve Program, the Farmland Protection Program, TEFAP and other nutrition priorities.

 

The Senators will also look to double the funding in the Committee-passed bill for late filers under the Pigford Consent Decree who haven’t gotten a chance for their claims to be heard under the settlement with USDA based on discrimination against black farmers. 

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            Here are specifics of the amendment.

 

  • Set a hard, enforceable cap of $250,000 for payments received by any one individual on an annual basis.

 

  • Limit the amount that farms could receive under specific programs to $40,000 for direct and fixed payments, $60,000 for counter-cyclical and average crop revenue payments, and $150,000 for marketing loan gains and loan deficiency payments.

 

  • Close the loopholes that allow mega farms to receive many multiple times the soft, unenforceable current nominal cap of $360,000.

 

  • Require individuals be actively engaged in farming to receive payments, adopting recommendations made by the Government Accountability Office and the USDA Payment Limitations Commission established by the last farm bill.

 

  • Thwart fraud and abuse of the system and improve enforcement by moving to measurable standards, new rules preventing one farmer from qualifying multiple corporations to collectively receive payments exceeding the limits, and making ineligible for five years anyone who commits fraud to evade limits.