On Monday, the Senate Agriculture Appropriations panel voted to approve a draft fiscal 2022 spending bill of $25.9 billion in discretionary funding, with an additional $7 billion in emergency funding to cover crop losses to agricultural disasters in 2020 and 2021. The emergency funding would provide $6.3 billion for the disaster program and a separate $750 million for livestock producers who “experienced looses due to droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, floods and other qualifying disaster.” Additionally, several rural development loan programs would see an increase if the spending bill is approved, including a $6.3 billion increase for the Rural Housing Service pushing the total to more than $30 billion. Despite the seemingly good news for this and the two other FY22 appropriations bill that passed out of committee on Wednesday — the Energy and Water and Military Construction measures were also passed on Wednesday — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) stated that the three bills, “are not on track to cross the finish line out on the floor” because there is no agreement yet on overall spending levels for the new fiscal year, which starts October 1st.
