On Wednesday evening, December 8, the House passed a combined Continuing Resolution-Food Safety bill by a vote of 212-206.  All Republicans and 35 Democrats voted no.

The Continuing Resolution would fund all government functions for the remainder of the current fiscal year 2011, which ends September 30, 2011.  The current short-term Continuing Resolution expires on December 18.

The Food Safety bill is nearly identical to the bill the Senate passed last week, with the only differences relating to language about user fees.

The food safety part of the vote is a victory for supporters of small and mid-sized family farms, local and regional food, and conservation.  Since the Senate passed its bill, trade associations representing produce industry and agribusiness interests have been hammering away against the Senate compromise package, urging the House to insist on a conference committee with the Senate for the purpose of stripping out small and mid-size farm provisions from the bill.  Their effort failed as the House adopted the Senate package intact, with the exception of some relatively minor changes to its user fees.  The bill, now packaged with the all-government spending bill, now returns to the Senate for final action.

Read more on the House food safety bill action on Food Safety News website here.

Senate Democrats are attempting to pass an Omnibus Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2011 instead of the House-passed Continuing Resolution.  However, with respect to the food safety bill, there is a leadership agreement that the same language that has now passed the House will be attached to the Omnibus and, should the Omnibus fail, will be attached to a final House-Senate negotiated Continuing Resolution.

The House-passed full year Continuing Resolution caps government discretionary spending at the FY 2010 levels though it makes numerous adjustments within that flat-line spending.  Some of the big decreases include cuts for the Census (needed in 2010 but not in 2011), high speed rail, unspent highway funding, and funding to close defense bases.   Some of the larger increases include Pell grants, Pentagon spending, Veteran’s medical operations, nuclear weapons spending that is part of the deal to try to pass the START treaty, and President Obama’s “Race to the Top” education grants.

Within the agriculture portion of the bill, there is a $6.5 million increase for USDA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) and a large increase in formula funds for land grant universities that is roughly offset by a decrease in congressional earmarked research and extension projects, leaving the earmarking decisions up to USDA and the universities.  There is an important increase of $31.9 million needed to simply maintain Farm Service Agency direct and guaranteed  loans at roughly the same program levels as 2010.  There are also increases for child nutrition and commodity assistance feeding programs and for the Food and Drug Administration.  The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is cut by $270 million from its 2008 Farm Bill level, but no other farm bill conservation cuts are included.