11/8/05
The Land Stewardship Project, a Minnesota-based membership organization working on farm and conservation issues, strongly urges the Minnesota Congressional delegation to vote against the 2006 Budget Reconciliation.

We believe this misguided reconciliation package should be rejected because cuts proposed in the House bill fall heaviest on needy people, family farmers and the environment. In particular, the agriculture component of the bill, as marked up by the House Agriculture Committee, would:

- Cut food support and nutrition programs $884 million. These programs predominately serve working poor people, the elderly and children. Anti-hunger groups in the state indicate that these proposed cuts would have disastrous effects on hungry Americans and burden local food shelves with increased demands and fewer resources to meet the demands.

- Diminish conservation spending by $654 million. In particular, House proposals gut the Conservation Security Program (CSP), a stewardship focused program that rewards farmers for protecting soil and water on working farmland, by $500 million. These proposed cuts to CSP would halt new enrollments after this year. In the first two years of the program, CSP supported 700 Minnesota farmers and brought $7.3 million into the state.

- Fails to represent a balanced approach to Farm Bill spending. Glaringly absent in the House bill is any form of payment limits on crop subsidies. While cuts are proposed to conservation and food support and nutrition programs, mega-farms continue to collect hundreds of thousands and even millions each year in crop subsidies. This allocation of scarce funding is misguided and inappropriate.

Because of these reasons, the Land Stewardship Project opposes the 2006 Budget Reconciliation. These cuts would have a serious and negative impact on the nation’s ability to alleviate hunger, solve critical environmental problems and improve economic opportunity in rural America. We also believe that the proposal to enact nearly $70 billion in tax cuts later this year is irresponsible. Enacting tax breaks for wealthy Americans and preserving huge handouts to the biggest mega-farms in the country, while slashing programs that serve millions of people and protect our nation’s soil and water, is wrong.

If Congress acts responsibly, as we urge them to do, and rejects this wrongheaded budget reconciliation package, federal funding will continue at current levels. Rejecting the proposed budget reconciliation would help the nation’s current fiscal crisis—it would decrease deficit spending by between $16 billion and $35 billion—since tax beaks will not be enacted.

Opposing the 2006 Budget Reconciliation is the right decision for Minnesota’s communities, family farms and the land.

For more information, contact the Land Stewardship Project at 612-722-6377 or marks@landstewardshipproject.org.

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