WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) put forward a vote on an amendment to the Republican budget resolution that would have prohibited the Trump administration from continuing to illegally withhold funding from signed contracts previously entered into by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). President Trump’s USDA has refused to make reimbursement payments to farmers and to organizations providing assistance to farmers, without any indication of when or whether they will be paid the money they laid out and are owed. Farmers and the organizations that serve them operate on tight margins and cannot be left waiting for weeks and months without funding they rightfully planned for and need to keep operating.
“I am disappointed that my Republican colleagues blocked my attempt to bring relief to the farmers who have been in limbo ever since the USDA illegally froze previously signed agreements and contracts,” said Senator Booker. “We as the federal government made a deal with farmers and many organizations that support them. Based on that deal, they spent their hard-earned money to live up to their end of the bargain. In rejecting my amendment, Republicans showed that they were more concerned about tax cuts for billionaires than doing what is right by the people who keep us fed.”
When farmers successfully apply to USDA programs and then spend their own dollars in reliance upon signed contracts with the agency, they rightfully expect that they will receive reimbursement. Similarly, farmer-serving organizations—which farmers rely upon to connect to local markets and implement practices that make them more productive and less resource intensive—are facing imminent funding crises from not being reimbursed for completed or in-progress contracted work. If not quickly made whole, these organizations will be forced to make agonizing decisions to lay off staff and stop helping farmers, destroying years of progress in advancing local food systems.
Recently Senator Booker introduced the Honor Farmer Contracts Act, legislation to release illegally withheld funding for all contracts and agreements previously entered into by USDA. Senator Booker will continue to push for enactment of this bill to provide desperately needed relief to America’s farmers