Markup session of hort subcommittee

Just listened to the farm bill markup session by the House Agriculture subcommittee on horticulture and organic agriculture. There were some amendments offered, but nothing that would dip into mandatory funding. In fact, subcommittee chair Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., was even asked about the expense to the agency of an amendment he offered that simply wanted an internal research report on Section 32 food purchases.

From a House Ag Committee press release, here are amendments adopted:
. Chairman Cardoza's amendment to provide an independent evaluation of the USDA commodity purchasing process, particularly considering Section 32 and the importance of increasing purchases of specialty crops.
. Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's amendment to redirect funds for USDA to collect organic production and market data.
Congressman Kevin McCarthy's amendment to establish a Fresh Produce Education Initiative to inform industry and the public aboutfood safety handling and practices.
Congressman Randy Kuhl's amendment to establish the National Clean Plant network to fund the distribution of healthy plant stocksin the specialty crops industry.
Congressman Randy Kuhl's amendment to increase the payment limitation cap for payments under the Tree Assistance Program from$75,000 per year to $150,000 per year

As you might expect, Cardoza and other members of the subcommittee lamented the scoring problem and the resulting paltry funding scenario for specialty crop priorities for the farm bill. But Cardoza said, as a Blue Dog Democrat, he believes in the pay-go principle.

"Sometimes those principles we believe in come into conflict with what we would like to do (with legislation)," he said.

TK: Building expectations only to crash them is done quite a bit in Congress, Cardoza observed today. But he said he would raise expectations if in the process the level of debate also is raised. Now the question is, can the debate continue in Congress when expectations have been lowered so far?