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Don’t balance budget on the backs of farmers
The president of Minnesota Farm Bureau says while the federal deficit needs to be addressed, balancing the budget on the backs of farmers is not the right approach.
Responding to President Trump’s 2018 budget request that includes cuts of more than $230 billion from mandatory Farm Bill spending over 10 years, Kevin Paap tells Brownfield he’s very concerned.
“That’s a very small part of the total budget, and quite frankly, farm programs (like) crop insurance are a very small part of the entire USDA budget.”
He says now is not the time to take away risk management tools farmers depend on.
“Cutting crop insurance by 36 percent…crop insurance is a good public-private partnership that helps eliminate some risk. So we’re going to continue to work with all members of Congress.”
Minnesota Congressman Collin Peterson, ranking member on the House Ag Committee, calls Trump’s budget proposal a warning to people in rural America.
Peterson says by all accounts this budget is going nowhere on Capitol Hill, but it is a statement of the President’s priorities.
I’m interested to know where Mr. Paap thinks the budget should be cut. I imagine that every program that is cut will have some group that says “this is going to hurt us.” A bunch of “small parts” of the budget adds up to a large portion of the budget.