10. Department of Agriculture · Minor · Needs Congress
Restrict CCC spending to temporary, targeted problems
Printed page 295 10. Department of Agriculture
“Clarify that spending is only to address problems that are temporary in nature and ensure that funding is targeted to address such problems.”
What has happened
- Not started
Nothing clarifies that CCC spending is only for temporary problems, and nothing requires it to be targeted. Section 5 is unamended on both counts: the only 119th-Congress change to it is in the House-passed farm bill (H.R. 7567, 224-200 on 2026-04-30), whose Sec. 1012 strikes "(other than tobacco)" from section 5 each place it appears — a widening of the same discretion, and in any event not enacted. The authority as it stands carries neither test, which the executive's largest use of it shows: the $11 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance Program rests on section 5(b)'s bare power to "make available materials and facilities required in connection with the production and marketing of agricultural commodities", and CCC paid it across every eligible commodity on 2025 reported acreage rather than to producers facing an identified problem. The rule does present the payments as one-time and as a response to "temporary trade market disruptions", but that is the agency's own characterization of its own program, not the statutory clarification the Quote asks Congress for. Bill-title searches over the 119th-Congress Corpus for "Commodity Credit", "Charter Act" and "slush" return only an unrelated biofuel-feedstock amendment (H.R. 8762, referred to committee) and a family of settlement-"slush fund" bills with no CCC content. Cluster B (CCC Charter Act section 5) in `docs/research/ch-10.md`, round 3 ticket 09 batch 09c, records the queries.
- H.R. 7567, Farm, Food, and National Security Act, engrossed in the House 2026-04-30 — Sec. 1012 widens CCC Charter Act section 5 by restoring tobacco as a covered commodity
- CCC final rule: Farmer Bridge Assistance (FBA) Program — $11 billion in payments under section 5(b) of the CCC Charter Act (15 U.S.C. 714c(b))
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- One negative search covers the whole CCC cluster (#762-#767); the executive-side ask is #761.
- H.R. 8762 (“To amend the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act to exclude crops used to produce biofuel with respect to an agricultural commodity”, referred to House Agriculture 2026-05-12) is the only other Charter Act bill; it is a commodity-definition change, not a limit on section 5 discretion, and in any event a bill that has only been introduced leaves the ask not started.
- H.R. 7567’s Sec. 1012 text was read in the engrossed bill at govinfo.
- Reviewed 2026-09-01. The Status stays not started. The Status note is written against this Quote’s own limbs — temporariness and targeting — rather than the cluster’s shared negative from #762, from the Farmer Bridge Assistance rule, read in full at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-02-23/html/2026-03456.htm (the Federal Register’s own site refused automated reads at the time; the govinfo copy of the same document opened). The rule’s authority passage and its payment basis are the two facts it rests on.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- Commodity Credit Corporation spending
- ID
- 766