WASHINGTON – With Congress returning from a week-long recess, lawmakers this week will push back on President Trump?s proposals to gut international food aid programs.
The House Agriculture Committee will hold its first hearing on food aid programs since the release May 23 of Trump?s fiscal 2018 budget, which proposes to eliminate the $1.7-billion-a-year Food for Peace program as well as the smaller McGovern-Dole international school feeding program.
?The president?s recent budget proposal makes this hearing especially timely, as supporters of these programs will have the opportunity to demonstrate how these programs truly embody an ?America first? policy,? said House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue makes his first international trip, to Toronto, to meet with his Canadian counterpart, Agriculture and Agri-Food Minister Lawrence MacAulay, and other officials. The trip comes amid an ongoing dispute about whether Canada?s new Class 7 dairy pricing policy has cut off the market to ultra-filtered U.S. milk.
?The bilateral U.S.-Canada relationship is important to the prosperity of both of our countries and I look forward to strengthening this bond with our neighbors to the north moving forward,? said Perdue.
While he?s in Toronto, Perdue will head to a downtown restaurant to kick off a two-week-long event showcasing U.S. foods and beverages.
Food for Peace, long the flagship of U.S. food assistance, funds the shipment of U.S. grown and processed commodities to needy regions. Trump?s plan would not only shrink the U.S. role in hunger relief, it would also mean American aid would primarily rely on the use of cash and vouchers, not U.S. commodities.
That was just the scenario that Conaway, R-Texas, feared when lawmakers were debating the Global Food Security Act, which authorized the Emergency Food Security Program, an account operated by the U.S. Agency for International Development to provide aid through vouchers and cash.
Some supporters of EFSP see it as a model for overhauling Food for Peace, but House Foreign Affairs Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., assured Conaway on the House floor last summer that the two programs are intended to operate in parallel.
Committee members are expected to argue at the hearing that eliminating Food for Peace runs counter to Trump?s pledged to put ?America first,? a point that the chairman of the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., made at a hearing May 24 with Perdue.
Read more at Agri-Pulse.com.
