“Beautiful” Bill’s Passage Paves Way for Whole Milk

A massive tax and spending bill is now law – but with half a year left, Congress now can turn its attention to getting whole milk back in schools, NMPF’s Paul Bleiberg said in a Dairy Defined podcast. 

“One item I'll single out first that we're hopeful to get done really in the next couple months here is the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act,” Bleiberg, NMPF’s executive vice president for government relations, said in a podcast released today. “We had a great voice vote, bipartisan voice vote out of the Senate Agriculture Committee just over a month ago, so we're hoping that we can get that through the Senate and then through the House, and begin that work of getting whole milk and 2% milk back into schools and getting kids better access to the nutrient-dense dairy options that really give them the benefits they need and that they enjoy.”

Bleiberg also discussed efforts toward agricultural labor reform, the farm bill provisions included in current law and NMPF’s policy priorities for the rest of the year. Joining Bleiberg in the podcast is Maria Brockamp, NMPF’s new manager of government relations.

To learn more about NMPF’s policy efforts via a new bill tracker, please visit nmpf.org/bill-tracker. 

Transcript

Alan Bjerga: Hello, and welcome to the Dairy Defined podcast. The Big Beautiful bill is law and agriculture is taking stock. Joining us today is Paul Bleiberg, Executive Vice President of Government Relations for NMPF, and Maria Brockamp, the newest member of NMPF's Government Relations team. Thank you for joining us.

Paul Bleiberg: Thank you for having us.

Maria Brockamp: Yeah. Thanks, Alan.

Alan Bjerga: I want to start with you, Paul. If you could, bring us up to speed on what this legislation does for dairy, and tell us a little bit about what it's doing for agriculture as a whole.

Paul Bleiberg: Absolutely. This bill includes, or now law I should say, includes a number of different items that are impactful to dairy farmers, both on the agriculture policy side and on the tax side. Starting on the ag side, the dairy margin coverage safety net is renewed for a number of years. There's new funding in the bill for a number of items, including for mandatory costs surveys at USDA to help the dairy industry have better data to inform future conversations around milk pricing. I think everybody knows that we recently completed a process at USDA regarding federal milk marketing order monetization, but something I think everybody agreed on from the dairy supply chain is that the current data that we had wasn't perfect, especially when it came to how do you figure out what the manufacturing allowances should be. So, we were really excited that this bill included new funding to help get the process started at USDA and begin the work of doing those surveys.

Over on the tax side, at the Section 199A, tax deduction, which dairy co-ops and other ag co-ops could claim and pass back to their farmers was made permanent, which we were really excited about. There's also some new language in the bill to strengthen the clean fuel production tax credit to maybe improve the revenue stream opportunities that'll be available to dairy farmers.

Now, getting to your second part about agriculture as a whole, there are a number of other items in the bill on the funding side, the commodity safety net was revamped and strengthened. There's new funding in the bill on trade promotion, animal health, specialty crops, research, and there's a reinvestment of dollars from the conservation side. The dollars that were enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act are now spread out into the baseline for conservation programs, so that could be available for a longer period of time.

Alan Bjerga: When you mentioned commodity programs and the trade programs and specialty crops, this is starting to sound like a farm bill. Is this the Farm bill?

Paul Bleiberg: I think a lot of the Farm bill was in this bill when it came to funding. Chairman Thompson on the House Ag Committee has referred to this a number of times as Farm bill 1.0, because as you heard, the different items I rattled off and that you mentioned as well, quite a few of the previously unmet funding needs, but not all of them were included in this bill, so quite a few of those were handled. I think there are still quite a few items on the policy side. Items that don't deal directly with mandatory dollars that need to be dealt with. And so, we know there's starting to be the conversation around a Skinny bill or Bill 2.0 or something like that that work could begin on that later in the year and we'll see what happens with that.

But obviously, one simple example that our dairy listeners will know, is that we still need to take action between now and the end of the year to avert the dairy cliff. That's not something that ultimately deals with mandatory funding, but suspending permanent law is a key item that would have to get done in another package, and certainly, there'd be some other items as well. We have a bill on the trade policy side dealing with common food names, bipartisan bicameral bill called the Safety Act. Again, not a bill that deals with mandatory funding, so something that we might want to, things we would want to try to get into a larger bill.

Alan Bjerga: Speaking of the Farm Bill, basically, as long as you and I have been in Washington, Paul, which is now becoming a while, it's been a truism in Washington that Farm bills passed because there was always this coalition between the farm groups and the nutrition groups, people who were supporting SNAP, WIC programs that were feeding needy families. That didn't really happen this time because of the format of this bill. You see snap. What are the implications of that for farm and food policy moving forward?

Paul Bleiberg: That's a great question, and I think it fully remains to be seen as to what'll happen in the coming years. I think in the near term, any bill 2.0 will need to be bipartisan, assuming it's done outside of budget reconciliation, which I think will be the point of dealing with policy items that you can't deal with in that process. And so, not withstanding what played out on this package just now, any bill that's going to get enacted ultimately is going to have to have support from both parties. And so, perhaps there'll be different discussions there on food and nutrition-related issues that have a bipartisan support and can be included in there. What it means for the longer term the next time the core commodity programs that were extended and changed in this bill come up for renewal is a broad question that I think we'll see maybe how does the near term play out and then how does the long term play out.

Alan Bjerga: Moving away from the grizzled veteran perspective, Maria, you're a lot newer to Washington than Paul and I are and very new to NMPF. Welcome aboard.

Maria Brockamp: Yeah, Alan. I would argue that I'm not as new to NMPF as some might think having interned here several summers ago, but very happy to be back in Washington full-time working with Paul on the Government Relations team. I still think I'm getting used to the pace of work here. We've had our nose to the grindstone here on the Big Beautiful bill. Paul and I are hungry for being able to work on some new legislation, but of course, as I'm learning, Congress doesn't always move at the same pace that you want Congress to move, so still working on that.

Alan Bjerga: And I did somewhat undersell you, Maria. I do apologize for that. You've been in the policy space before and not just with this internship that you had here, but also, you worked for a while at the American Soybean Association. Just tell us a little bit about that work in your own background.

Maria Brockamp: Yeah, of course. I grew up with a row crop background being from one of the I states, Illinois in the Midwest. Previous to coming on to National Milk, I worked at the American Soybean Association in their St. Louis office, really working on that partnership that they have, ASA being the policy arm of soy, much like how NMPF is the policy arm of dairy. Happy to have that foundation and be able to build on it here in Washington.

Alan Bjerga: Over to you, Paul. We've been talking about the Big Beautiful bill, which is now the law. Is that it this year? This was a massive piece of legislation. It was most of the president's domestic agenda in terms of spending, what remained for dairy for the rest of this year?

Paul Bleiberg: Well, certainly, it was a major bill, and probably the most encompassing bill that this Congress will enact, but there's still plenty of work to be done. I think, one item I'll single out first that we're hopeful to get done really in the next couple months here is the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, and this is something we've been working on for a while. We had a great voice vote, bipartisan voice vote out of the Senate Agriculture Committee just over a month ago, so we're hoping that we can get that through the Senate and then through the house, and begin that work of getting whole milk and 2% milk back into schools and getting kids better access to the nutrient-dense dairy options that really give them the benefits they need and that they enjoy.

After that, and in addition at the same time, the other item that really is percolating right now is ag labor. This has been really an existential issue for us for a long time, and the politics always seem to get in the way of a solution being enacted into law. We've tried in so many different configurations of government, but I think we're at an inflection point now given the heightened conversation around immigration and border issues, I think we're hoping that we've reached a point that perhaps now's the time for some action, both legislative and administrative. There are a number of different legislative efforts in the works. Chairman Thompson has indicated that he's working on some legislation based on what the ag labor working group that he put together reported out last year.

Over on the administrative side, the president has made a number of comments in recent weeks too, regarding the importance of making sure that farmers, including dairy farmers, have access to the workforce that they need. So for us, this is really about making sure our current workers and their families are able to stay here and continue doing what they're doing and making sure that we have a pipeline that works for us to be able to hire workers in the future through an improved guest worker program. So hoping, and that's a tough one, but hoping that we can make some progress on it over the coming weeks.

Alan Bjerga: We've been speaking with NMPF's Paul Bleiberg and Maria Brockamp. Paul, Maria, anything you'd like to add about impressions of the moment to the policy environment? Anything in terms of the current situation and circumstance in Washington that you'd like to leave our listeners with today?

Paul Bleiberg: I'll just make one comment, and then, let Maria chime in with anything else you'd like to add. I'll just say that, every day, there's a new headline. Some days there are 10 new headlines, and trying to parse all of those and figure out what's the most meaningful can sometimes be difficult for all of us here, let alone if you're not here tracking everything on a daily basis. I just assure everybody that below all of that, or maybe behind the scenes of all of that, is a lot of work that's being done, including on the two issues I just mentioned. Maybe most notably the ag labor issue, even if there's not a bill introduced yet or if there's not a program announced yet, there is a large amount of work being done, meetings, conversations, productive dialogue involving people in both parties to try to get solutions moving forward, and sometimes, what we see publicly is just the end stage or maybe the final stages of that work.

Maria Brockamp: Yeah. I definitely echo what Paul said. I've been so impressed with him and others, not just in dairy, but really, in the agriculture industry in general, out here in Washington, and the constant work. The daily phone calls, the constant conversations that are happening to work for our farmers across the country.

Alan Bjerga: Paul, Maria, thank you for your time.

Maria Brockamp: Thank you, Alan.

Paul Bleiberg: Thank you for having us on. 

Alan Bjerga: Learn more about NMPF's legislative efforts. We have a new tracker and it's really cool. You can go to nmpf.org, look under advocacy, click on the bill tracker, and see all the legislation we're following on Capitol Hill. Check it out. For more of the Dairy Defined podcast, all you have to do is go to our website or go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Amazon Music and search under the podcast name Dairy Defined. We will talk again soon.