NACIA Washington Update
October 15, 2009

The major event this week on the Hill was the passage of a health care reform bill by the Senate Finance Committee. The bill was approved by a vote of 14 to 9, with Senator Snowe (R-ME) being the lone Republican voting in support of the bill. The next steps in the health care saga will be to join the Finance Committee bill with the other health care bill approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. On the House side, yesterday the House Education and Labor Committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee, and the Ways and Means Committee all reported out their health care bill, “America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009.” This now clears the bill to be voted on by the whole House when Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) decides to bring it up.

In crop insurance, the biggest focus currently is the ongoing SRA renegotiations. We are nearing the time by which the companies will have finished submitting comments to RMA. The next step is the evaluation of the comments by RMA while drafting their proposal for the agreement, which is expected to be completed early November. Once that has been presented, the negotiations will begin to intensify. Some topics we expect to be considered include addressing participation in chronically under-served states and some adjustment to A&O and underwriting gains, perhaps in the form of a “smoothing” of A&O.

Other activities that may be of interest include the following:

• Former USDA Undersecretary for Rural Development Tom Dorr has been announced as the new president and CEO of the U.S. Grains Council, which is nation’s export market development organization for corn, barley, sorghum and their coproducts. He is slated to begin on November 16.
• Secretary Vilsack announced yesterday USDA will not issue final 2008 counter-cyclical payments to farmers enrolled in the Direct and Counter-cyclical Program for peanuts, corn, grain sorghum, soybeans and oats. He stated that the average commodity prices remained above the trigger levels. However, yesterday USDA began issuing payments for upland cotton. Details.
• Late last week USDA launched the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the center of science and research at USDA. Authorization of the institute came from the 2008 Farm Bill. Secretary Vilsack described the institute as follows: “Formed in the main from the existing Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, NIFA will be the Department's extramural research enterprise. It is no exaggeration to say that NIFA will be a research "start-up" company - we will be rebuilding our competitive grants program from the ground up to generate real results for the American people.” Details.

While agents are not technically a part of the SRA renegotiation, NACIA is working hard to ensure that when opportunities to weigh in are available, the agents’ voice is heard. As the only organization that represents only agents, and represents agents from all companies, it is important that NACIA has a strong Washington presence to ensure that agents’ interests are heard. Your participation in NACIA is vital to this effort. Please pay your 2009 dues.

As always, please let us know if you have any questions.

Brent W. Gattis
NACIA Washington Representative

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