The President’s budget proposals for the Department of Agriculture includes a number of items that TCS would like to see come to fruition. These include proposals (savings estimates in parentheses):

• To reduce crop insurance premium subsidies and underwriting gains. TCS has written extensively on this topic, and testified on these excessive subsidies during the recent farm bill debate. ($5.2 billion)
• To phase out direct payments over three years to farmers with sales revenue of more than $500,000 annually. This is another area where TCS has long been a proponent of reform.  ($9.8 billion)
• That reduces program funding for overseas brand promotion and minimizes the benefits that large for-profit entities indirectly gain as members of trade associations who also participate in the Market Access Program .  ($358 million)
• Would eliminate the requirement for the Government to pay the storage costs of cotton that is put under loan with USDA.  ($570 million)

The full details of the President’s budget are expected next month, so we will have to wait to fully endorse any of these proposals. But in at least one other agriculture-related area the budget falls short. In promising to move the country in a new direction using more renewable fuels, TCS would like to see a clear commitment to reducing subsidies for corn-based ethanol . This is a century old product that should long ago have been taken off of the federal dole.