House Panel Clears Spending Bill for Agriculture

A Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 appropriations bill for USDA, FDA and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission was sent to the House floor after being approved Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee by a vote of 31 to 20.The bill would provide $23.27 billion in discretionary funding and has a combined total of discretionary and mandatory funding of $145.1 billion. One approved amendment would stop USDA from disallowing the use of potatoes in school breakfasts. Another amendment would require genetically engineered salmon to be covered by the GMO disclosure standard enacted in 2016.The panel also approved a spending bill for the Army Corps of Engineers that includes a repeal of the Waters of the US (WOTUS) rule.Meanwhile, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told a congressional panel that he expects a finalized proposed withdrawal of WOTUS rule "sometime in the third quarter of this year," and then propose a "replacement" of the rule by end of the year.That is a more expedited timeline than the early 2019 timeframe that was signaled in the regulatory agenda released earlier by the Trump administration.