Remember that agreement for Congress to avert a government shutdown until Feb. 18? Well, now it’s moved until March 11. One of Congress's primary responsibilities is to fund the government, and yet again, they’ve kicked the can down the road.

House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro, D-Ct., and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced a deal Feb. 9 that bipartisan, bicameral negotiators have agreed on a framework for fiscal year 2022 appropriations.

FY 2022 negotiations stalled last year when Democrats proposed to raise domestic spending by 14% and defense spending by 5%.

With this framework, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees will now negotiate the details with the understanding that final omnibus legislation will require agreement allowing for House and Senate passage and President Biden’s signature by the new March 11 government funding deadline.

A new omnibus funding bill will need support from most House members, plus all Senate Democrats and at least ten Senate Republicans to become law. But, it’s not yet clear how the new agreement handles disputed policy riders or dozens of other controversies across $1.5 trillion in annual funding priorities. “These details could still derail a new omnibus,” according to an update from Michael Best Strategies.

DeLauro says: “I am pleased that we have reached agreement on a framework, which will allow our subcommittees to get to work finalizing an omnibus. We will now proceed with great intensity to enact legislation making transformative investments to create good-paying American jobs, grow opportunity for the middle class, support the vulnerable who work hard, and protect our national security.”

Great intensity? We can hope Congress can do their job...

The crop insurance industry sent a letter to Leahy and DeLauro at the end of January, urging appropriators to protect crop insurance from harmful cuts.  

“Farmers spend as much as $4 billion per year of their own money to purchase insurance from the private sector. On average, farmers also must incur losses of almost 30% before their insurance coverage pays an indemnity,” a letter from the Crop Insurance Coalition notes. “Farmers, agribusinesses, lenders and lawmakers agree that crop insurance is a linchpin of the farm safety net and is crucial to the economic and food and fiber security of urban and rural America.”

Related: Congress gets more time to work on livestock price reporting

The last CR also included an extension of the Livestock Mandatory Reporting, which questions whether we’ll see another short-term extension of action on the bill. Very little chatter on Capitol Hill in Congress having the appetite to take up a five-year reauthorization of the bill.

FY23 work also behind

Ever wonder what regular order is as it pertains to government spending?

Alliance for a Stronger FDA Executive Director, Steven Grossman, explains each year usually starts with the State of the Union in late January, followed by the President’s Budget Request submitted to Congress in February. By April, the House and Senate are supposed to agree on a budget that contains a ceiling for federal discretionary spending. Subsequently, in May/June, the appropriations committees take that discretionary spending number and divides it among the 12 subcommittees.

Appropriators, during May, June and July, devote themselves to marking up all the spending bills, passing the bills, gaining conference agreements on numbers and sending the bills to the president for signature by September 30 or earlier. This straightforward process, called “regular order appropriations,” was last achieved more than a decade ago.

Doesn’t look very much like this year is going back to “regular order.”

As Congress is trying to finalize the details of ag funding for the 2022 fiscal year, which started October 1, 2021, the earliest likely date for the President’s FY23 budget request is about 10 days after the State of the Union, which is scheduled for March 1.

Reports indicate there was some indication that the Biden administration plans to come close to the 10-day spacing. This would put the budget release during the week of March 7 or March 14.

The President’s budget is often dead-on-arrival as Congress holds the purse strings. But this administration has clearly tried to offer proposals to sway the Democrat-controlled Congress to do its bidding.

As 2022 is an election year, members of Congress are even less likely to be hashing out details of the spending bill and instead are spending time back in their districts campaigning. “Early days in moving forward on FY23 appropriations are likely to result in compression rather than extension of the FY 23 appropriations process,” he adds.

And so we live another day, with another can kicked down the way.