Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 2042 - Studying the Use of Actual Crop Yields in Price Support Programs

(House)
(Jontz (D) Indiana and 27 others)

The Administration opposes enactment of H.R. 2042.

One of the successes of the Food Security Act of 1985 has been to encourage producers to turn toward the marketplace rather than the Federal government. The 1985 Act severed the link between actual yields and Federal subsidies by essentially freezing farm program payment yields. Although H.R. 2042 requires only a study of alternative methods of computing actual yields for farm program purposes, this would be a move in the wrong direction. If 1989 actual yields or five-year average yields were used to determine farm program payments for the 1990 crops, Federal outlays for such payments would probably increase by approximately $1 billion.