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         Congressional Research Service
~ Informing the legishative debate since 1914


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                                                                                   Updated September 29, 2023

Farm Bill Primer: Programs Without Baseline Beyond FY2023


In preparation for the next farm bill, Congress may give
consideration to a subset of 21 programs in the 2018 farm
bill (Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, P.L. 115-334)
that do not have a budget baseline for funding beyond
FY2023. These programs received $906 million of
mandatory funding during the five years of the 2018 farm
bill. Programs that receive mandatory funding do not
require annual discretionary appropriations.

From a budgetary perspective, many programs are assumed
to continue beyond the end of their authorization. That is,
they have a continuing baseline beyond the end of a farm
bill, which gives them built-in future funding if
policymakers decide that the programs should continue, or,
if not, the baseline can be reallocated or used as an offset
for deficit reduction. Reauthorizing farm bill programs
without baseline would have a positive score (cost) and
likely need to be offset by reductions elsewhere.

Why   Some  Programs   Have  Baseline, Others  Not
Under budget rules, a program with mandatory spending
authority in the last year of its authorization generally may


be assumed to continue as if it did not expire. This is the
case for long-standing farm bill programs. Some of the
newer, smaller farm bill programs do not continue in the
baseline because they (a) have mandatory spending less
than a minimum $50 million scoring threshold in the last
year of the farm bill or (b) were not provided baseline to
continue by the authorizing and budget committees.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects future
government spending in its official budget baselines but has
not published a list of expiring farm bill programs without a
continuing baseline. To compile this list, CRS analyzed the
CBO  score of the 2018 farm bill, current CBO baseline
projections, and the statutory text of the law, looking for
programs that received mandatory funding but do not have
baseline beyond FY2023.

Based on this analysis, 21 programs across 8 of the 12 titles
of the 2018 farm bill received $906 million of mandatory
spending authority (out of total mandatory spending of
$428 billion across all farm bill programs) that do not have
a continuing baseline after FY2023 (Figure 1, Table 1).


Figure I. 2018 Farm Bill Programs Without  a Budget Baseline After FY2023, by Title


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$ MiHions, 5 years, FY2019-FY2023
50            100          150


200


   Nutrition, $20m.       F    tF      Bank progr
   Commodities, $16m.        Program  implementation
   Rural Development, $10m.  Rural [con. Dev. Program
Source: Created by CRS using CRS Report R45425, Budget Issues That Shaped the 2018 Farm Bill, Table 3, table notes b and c.

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