In May 2023, the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees USDA approved a fiscal 2024 spending proposal along party lines. It would have clawed back nearly $6 billion in previously provided funds, limited the Agriculture Secretary’s access to Commodity Credit Corporation money, and blocked work on three livestock-marketing rules. The bill never became law. The full House voted it down that September, and FY2024 agriculture funding was ultimately carried in a different package.
What the headline refers to
The headline echoes a May 19, 2023 report by Chuck Abbott in Successful Farming on the House Agriculture appropriations subcommittee’s fiscal 2024 proposal. “Do more with less” is political framing from the subcommittee chair, Maryland Representative Andy Harris, who chairs the panel that funds USDA and the Food and Drug Administration. It describes a position, not a measured result.
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Two things are easy to miss. First, the story covers a committee-stage proposal, not enacted law. Second, the figures attached to it depend on how they are counted, which is why the same bill can be described as a $17 billion, $25 billion or $25.9 billion proposal depending on the source.
What the proposal would have clawed back
According to the May 2023 report, the subcommittee’s mark included nearly $6 billion in clawbacks. The largest named items were:
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- $2 billion tied to distressed USDA loan borrowers.
- $500 million for the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP).
These are the amounts the report described as proposed provisions. The article did not establish that any of these cuts would have taken full effect, and the bill that carried them did not pass.
Policy riders beyond the dollar figures
Spending totals were only part of the proposal. The report also said it would:
- Limit Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s access to Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) funds.
- Bar USDA from working on three regulations under the Packers and Stockyards Act that concern livestock marketing.
Riders like these matter because they change how an agency can act, not only how much it is funded. Their practical effect would have depended on how the final text was written, and that text never became law.
Why the funding totals don’t match
Several different numbers circulated around the proposal, and they measure different things. The table below separates them by source, stage and basis.
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One free scan finds every outdated or missing driver and matches the right update for your exact hardware.Free scan · exact hardware match| Figure | Source and date | Stage | What it counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| $36.8 billion | Administration request, as cited in Successful Farming, May 19, 2023 | Presidential request | Basis not stated in the article |
| $17.2 billion | Successful Farming, May 19, 2023 | Subcommittee proposal | USDA discretionary spending in the proposal |
| About $25 billion | Harris’s argument, reported May 19, 2023 | Subcommittee proposal | The $17.2 billion plus $8.2 billion in previously provided funds |
| $25.313 billion | House Committee on Appropriations, H. Rept. 118-124, June 27, 2023 | Committee-reported bill | $17.838 billion allocation plus $7.475 billion in reallocated funds; $532 million below FY2023 enacted levels and $3.622 billion below the President’s FY2024 request |
| $25.9 billion, then $17.8 billion | Congressional Research Service, 2024 | Reported bill, CRS accounting | $25.9 billion for agency operations before rescissions and adjustments; $8.4 billion in rescissions and adjustments, including $5.8 billion from farm-loan debt relief and rural-energy programs under the Inflation Reduction Act and $1.7 billion from limits on CCC and Section 32 accounts; $17.8 billion official bill total, 31% below FY2023 |
The sources do not put these figures on a common basis, so they cannot be netted against one another. The committee’s comparison to the President’s request, for example, does not reconcile with the $36.8 billion request cited in May. When you quote a figure, name the stage and the accounting basis with it.
Who said what
Andy Harris
Harris said, “Some tough decisions have to be made,” and, “This bill takes the same approach American families take every day — they have to do more with less under the Biden economy.” He argued the bill addressed wasteful spending. These are attributed political statements.
Tom Vilsack
The Agriculture Secretary at the time said the funding bill “is pathetic, it is punitive, and it is petty.” This is also an attributed political judgment rather than an independent assessment of the proposal’s effects.
Sanford Bishop
Georgia Representative Sanford Bishop was credited with the claim that the proposed total was the “lowest since 2006.” Whether that comparison holds depends on which funding basis is used, as the table above shows.
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What happened after the subcommittee vote
- May 2023: The subcommittee approved the proposal along party lines.
- June 27, 2023: The House Committee on Appropriations issued H. Rept. 118-124 for the bill.
- September 28, 2023: The House failed to pass H.R. 4368 by a vote of 191 yeas to 237 nays, according to the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives.
- March 6, 2024: The House passed a six-bill FY2024 appropriations package. Agriculture was Division B of H.R. 4366, according to a Congressional Research Service status report dated March 8, 2024.
The same CRS timeline says FY2024 funding was ultimately provided after four continuing resolutions. The May 2023 proposal’s provisions, including the clawbacks and riders, were not carried over as written into that enacted path, and should not be treated as the FY2024 agriculture law.
How to check this yourself
- Start with the House Clerk’s roll call for H.R. 4368 to confirm the vote.
- Use the committee report, H. Rept. 118-124, when you need the bill’s own allocation language.
- Read the CRS status report for the accounting differences and the path to the enacted package.
- Check whether a figure includes reallocated or previously provided money before comparing it with another year’s budget.
If you hold a USDA farm loan or work in rural energy, the programs named in the proposal are the ones at stake. The sources do not show how the proposal would have changed any individual borrower’s terms, so treat the clawback amounts as program-level figures rather than personal impacts.
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