By Peter Urban
Stephens Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., voiced strong opposition today to cuts in agriculture programs in the debt reduction plan President Barack Obama announced Monday.
“Rural America is going to take it on the chin, and that is what you see with the Obama plan,” Pryor said during a conference call with reporters.
Obama’s plan to reduce deficits by $3.6 trillion over the next decade includes proposals to cut agriculture subsidies by $33 billion. It would end direct payments to farmers and reduce total spending on crop insurance by about 10 percent.
The agricultural community has already “given some” in earlier efforts to reduce federal spending, Pryor said. Any further cuts to agriculture programs should be left to Congress to consider when it takes up reauthorization of the Farm Bill, he said.
Pryor is not alone in voicing concerns about the impact Obama’s plan would have on farmers.
Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, issued a joint statement saying the Obama had turned “a deaf ear to America’s farmers.”
“The president’s policy priorities reveal a lack of knowledge of production agriculture and fails to recognize how wholesale changes to farm policy would impact the people who feed us. For example, cutting $8 billion from the crop insurance program puts the entire program at risk. We have heard again and again from producers that crop insurance is the best risk management tool available. In jeopardizing this program, the president turns a deaf ear to America’s farmers,” they said.
In announcing his plan, Obama pointed to agricultural subsidies as being in need of reform and noted that the subsidies “a lot of times pay large farms for crops they don’t grow.”
Pryor said that “rural America” is under attack from all sides.
“If you look at the political spectrum, folks on the left and right are after these programs. Rural America just doesn’t have that many friends in Washington anymore. And you see that playing out in the House and White House,” Pryor said.
