Billions of dollars for farmers and nutrition programs may have been saved last month behind closed doors.
As Politico reports, while lawmakers didn't disclose specifics about their handshake agreement, that was when House aides and agriculture lobbyists say House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway was able to stave off billions in proposed spending cuts to agriculture and nutrition programs.
The agriculture committee was initially facing around $70 billion in proposed cuts, but ended up closer to $10 billion, which came after Budget Committee Chairman Diane Black lowered her original goal for total mandatory spending cuts by roughly $300 billion, and Conaway made the case that cutting programs under his watch would imperil the 2018 farm bill.
Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of the conservative think tank, was publicly blaming Conaway for holding up the entire federal budget — and, by extension, their main goal of tax reform — by refusing to take the ax to nutrition and farm programs.