This morning, the U.S. House of Representatives on a party line vote of 220-213 advanced the Build Back Better Act (BBB). The House’s ability to move the bill forward prior to a lengthy filibuster from Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) hinged on the release of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of the legislation’s impact on the national deficit. Moderate Democrats during procedural negotiations on the recently passed and enacted infrastructure package had demanded that a vote be put off until the CBO analysis was released. According to CBO’s official fiscal score, the BBB would increase the national deficit by nearly $800 billion over the next five years.
Now that the legislation has cleared the House, it will likely be at least two weeks before the Senate considers the legislation. Even then, the bill’s chance of passage is still narrow and the legislation is likely to undergo high-level changes to ensure it can conform to Senate rules as well as win support from all 50 Democrats, including Senators’ Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) who have yet to give their support of the legislation.
Agriculture related provisions currently included in the BBB largely remain uncontroversial. If the BBB is eventually enacted, approximately $28 billion would be appropriated as new conservation funding to enact key provisions including a producer and non-operating landowner cover crop program. Payments to producers who establish a cover crop would be equal to $25 per-acre, up to 1,000 acres per producer and non-operating landowners could receive $5 per-acre, up to 1,000 acres to encourage or permit the operator to establish cover crops on rented land.