Congress is right back into the swing of things, with only 4 weeks of work before the August recess.

As noted before the break, the draft Agriculture Appropriations bill will be considered by the Full Committee tomorrow at 10:15 eastern.

This is always an opportunity for opponents of agriculture to trot their amendments, and this year appears to be no exception.

As of now, we are hearing from Committee staff that they are expecting 3 harmful amendments to crop insurance. They are:

• Pingree AGI limits. This will limit availability to crop insurance based on AGI in excess of $750K.
• DeLauro disclosure of individual farmer premium assistance on an individual farmer basis (EWG subsidy database for crop insurance).
• Removal of the base language on conservation compliance (providing relief on penalty only for 2016) - no sponsor yet. 

Members of the Full Appropriations Committee are printed below. If you have connections to any of these members (constituent or otherwise), please use them to contact and urge them to stand by our Nation's farmers, and vote against any anti-crop insurance amendments or other amendments that would undermine the important purposes of the Farm Bill (note: there may be an anti-sugar amendment; and another that would impede the marketing of cotton).

If you need contact information for any of these offices, go to http://yo-demo.capwiz.com/yo-demo/directory/congdir.tt. Enter the Congressman’s name in the space provided and click go to find the Member. Then click on the staff tab to identify the Agriculture LA. Then click on the contact tab to learn the Congressman’s telephone number. You may call that number and ask for the Agriculture LA by name or you may also email the Agriculture LA using this email format: firstname.lastname@mail.house.gov.

If you want or need more detail or back-up on any of these issues, just call us.

There are other issues we will want to catch up with you on, but this item takes precedence.

Thanks in advance for taking action.
Sincerely,
Tom Sell
Cell: (806) 535-0093
DC office: (202) 544-5873


Committee Members

Republicans

• Harold Rogers, Kentucky, Chairman 
• Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, New Jersey 
• Robert B. Aderholt, Alabama 
• Kay Granger, Texas 
• Michael K. Simpson, Idaho 
• John Abney Culberson, Texas 
• Ander Crenshaw, Florida 
• John R. Carter, Texas 
• Ken Calvert, California 
• Tom Cole, Oklahoma
• Mario Diaz-Balart, Florida 
• Charles W. Dent, Pennsylvania 
• Tom Graves, Georgia 
• Kevin Yoder, Kansas 
• Steve Womack, Arkansas 
• Jeff Fortenberry, Nebraska 
• Tom Rooney, Florida 
• Chuck Fleischmann, Tennessee 
• Jaime Herrera Beutler, Washington 
• David Joyce, Ohio 
• David Valadao, California 
• Andy Harris, MD, Maryland 
• Martha Roby, Alabama 
• Mark Amodei, Nevada 
• Chris Stewart, Utah 
• Scott Rigell, Virginia 
• David Jolly, Florida 
• David Young, Iowa 
• Evan Jenkins, West Virginia 
• Steven Palazzo, Mississippi 

Democrats

• Nita M. Lowey, New York 
• Marcy Kaptur, Ohio 
• Peter J. Visclosky, Indiana 
• José E. Serrano, New York 
• Rosa L. DeLauro, Connecticut 
• David E. Price, North Carolina 
• Lucille Roybal-Allard, California 
• Sam Farr, California 
• Chaka Fattah, Pennsylvania 
• Sanford D. Bishop, Jr., Georgia 
• Barbara Lee, California 
• Michael M. Honda, California 
• Betty McCollum, Minnesota 
• Steve Israel, New York 
• Tim Ryan, Ohio 
• C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, Maryland 
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida 
• Henry Cuellar, Texas 
• Chellie Pingree, Maine 
• Mike Quigley, Illinois 
• Derek Kilmer, Washington