The House Appropriations Committee held a markup on June 14 during which the Committee considered and passed its fiscal year 2024 (FY 24) Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies appropriations bill.

Included in the bill’s Agriculture title is report language reiterating Congress’s stance, first articulated in its 2022 year-end omnibus appropriations bill, that the Risk Management Agency (RMA) has the power to reinstate the inflation adjustment for crop agents without reopening the Standard Reinsurance Agreement (SRA).

PIA has been advocating for the inclusion of this language in this year’s appropriations bill since receiving this response from the RMA administrator, which says that, despite the will of Congress as expressed in the 2022 omnibus, the RMA does not plan to reinstate the inflation adjustment on the basis that doing so would require reopening the SRA.

Last fall, PIA and its allies successfully advocated for the inclusion of similar provisions in the omnibus stating the position of Congress, which was that RMA has the legal authority to reinstate the inflation adjustment without renegotiating the SRA. Despite Congress’s conclusion that RMA can restore the inflation adjustment without changing the SRA, RMA continues to insist that it does not have the legal authority to do so.

The report language included in the bill passed in the markup reiterates Congress’s stance that the RMA can reinstate the inflation adjustment for crop agents without reopening the SRA.

While the FY 24 appropriations process has only just begun, the inclusion of this report language in the bill that passed yesterday will provide an important precedent as Congress continues to engage in the FY 24 appropriations process over the next several months.