By Nick Paulson and Gary Schnitkey et.al
On Tuesday, July 1, 2025, the United States Senate passed the budget reconciliation bill and sent it back over to the House of Representatives; On Wednesday, July 3, 2025, the House agreed-to the Senate version of the bill, sending the bill to President Trump to be signed into law (H.R. 1, Engrossed Amendment Senate; Bogage and Sotomayor, July 3, 2025; Tully-McManus and Wu, July 3, 2025; Bogage, et al., July 1, 2025; Edmonson et al., July 1, 2025; Sotomayor and Bogage, July 2, 2025; Guggenheim and Carney, July 1, 2025). As discussed previously, the reconciliation bill effectively includes reauthorization of the Farm Bill with changes to the primary mandatory programs (farmdoc daily, May 14, 2025; May 20, 2025; May 22, 2025; May 27, 2025; June 10, 2025; July 1, 2025). Today’s article reviews an update from the Policy Design Lab project, providing interactive visualizations of payment projections for Agriculture Risk Coverage, county option (ARC-CO) and Price Loss Coverage (PLC). The projections include the current policy design and the changes by the provisions in the reconciliation bill as initially passed by the House (H.R. 1, Engrossed in House).
Background
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the Senate’s version of the reconciliation bill will add $3.3 trillion to the federal debt (not including interest costs on the debt); the bill is projected to reduce revenues (taxes) by $4.7 trillion, while reducing spending by $1.2 trillion over the next ten fiscal years (FY2025-2034) (CBO, June 29, 2025). Tucked into the budget reconciliation legislation is much of the Farm Bill, effectively reauthorizing it and making changes to policies under the protections of the special rules applicable to the reconciliation process (farmdoc daily, June 18, 2025). CBO projects the net reduction in Farm Bill spending by the reconciliation bill to be $120.25 billion (FY2025-2034). That reduction includes a total $185.9 billion cut for food assistance in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and about $73.5 billion (FY2025-2034) in additional spending. The additional spending is primarily the result of increasing payments and assistance to farmers ($66.4 billion, FY2025-2034). Most of the additional assistance to farmers is for Price Loss Coverage (PLC) payments ($50.5 billion, FY2025-2034), with a much smaller increase in Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) payments ($3.6 billion FY2025-2034). The bill also increases costs for crop insurance ($6.7 billion, FY2025-2034), trade promotion ($2.2 billion, FY2025-2034), and more. Finally, CBO scored a reduction in spending from conservation programs (-$1.8 billion, FY2025-2034), interaction effects (-$3.6 billion) and sequestration (-$2.2 billion).
Launched in 2022, the Policy Design Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a project to advance understanding of policy design and its processes by, among other things, applying research, data, and computational resources to visualize the impacts of policies (see, https://policydesignlab.ncsa.illinois.edu/; farmdoc daily, December 21, 2023). The project recently released a comprehensive update projecting payments from the changes to the ARC/PLC program in the reconciliation bill (see, https://policydesignlab.ncsa.illinois.edu/policy-lab/proposal-analysis/arc-plc-payments). The projections are modeled based on the changes in the legislative text summarized.
Source : illinois.edu