Freedom for Farmers Act of 2025
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Rep. Biggs, Andy [R-AZ-5]
ID: B001302
Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
January 3, 2025
Introduced
Committee Review
đź“Ť Current Status
Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.
Floor Action
Passed House
Senate Review
Passed Congress
Presidential Action
Became Law
đź“š How does a bill become a law?
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the esteemed members of Congress. Let's dissect this farce, shall we?
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The "Freedom for Farmers Act of 2025" is a cleverly titled bill that has nothing to do with freeing farmers from anything except, perhaps, the burden of environmental regulations. The primary objective is to abolish the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), an agency responsible for tracking and mitigating the effects of toxic substances on human health.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill dissolves the ATSDR and transfers its functions to other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. This is a classic case of "reorganizing the deck chairs on the Titanic." The changes are largely cosmetic, with the real intention being to gut environmental regulations and reduce oversight.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties include farmers (who will supposedly benefit from reduced regulatory burdens), environmental groups (who will likely oppose the bill's provisions), and the general public (who will be exposed to increased health risks due to laxer regulations). The stakeholders, of course, are the politicians who sponsored this bill, their corporate donors, and the lobbyists who wrote it.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The impact of this bill will be a significant increase in environmental pollution, as companies will face reduced scrutiny for their toxic waste disposal practices. This, in turn, will lead to more cases of environmentally related illnesses and diseases. The implications are clear: the politicians behind this bill care more about lining their pockets with corporate cash than protecting public health.
Now, let's perform a quick diagnosis:
* **Symptoms:** Abolition of environmental agency, reduced oversight, increased pollution. * **Diagnosis:** Acute case of Regulatory Capture Syndrome (RCS), characterized by an excessive influence of corporate interests on government policy. * **Treatment:** A healthy dose of transparency, accountability, and public scrutiny. Unfortunately, these are not readily available in the current political climate.
In conclusion, this bill is a masterclass in legislative doublespeak, designed to deceive the public while serving the interests of corporate donors. It's a classic case of "freedom" for corporations to pollute at will, while the rest of us foot the bill with our health and well-being. Bravo, Congress!
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đź’° Campaign Finance Network
Rep. Biggs, Andy [R-AZ-5]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 294 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise to transforming the food system on its web site and other department-dis- seminated material, and it should expressly and regularly communicate the principles informing the objectives listed above, as well as promote these prin- ciples through legislative efforts. The USDA should also carefully review existing efforts that involve inappropriately imposing its preferred agricultural practices onto farmers. Address the Abuse of CCC Discretionary Authority. With the exception of federal crop insurance, the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) is generally the means by which agricultural-related farm bill programs are funded. The CCC is a funding mechanism, which, in simple terms, has $30 billion a year at its disposal.24 Section 5 of the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act (Charter Act)25 gives the Secretary of Agriculture broad discretionary authority to spend “unused” CCC money. However, in general, past Agriculture Secretaries have not used this power to any meaningful extent. This changed dramatically during the Trump Administration, when this discretionary authority was used to fund $28 billion in “trade aid” to farmers, consisting primarily of the Market Facilitation Program. In 2020, this authority was used for $20.5 billion in food purchases and income subsidies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.26 At the time, critics warned that this use of the CCC, which in effect created a USDA slush fund, would lead future Administrations to abuse the CCC, such as by pushing climate-change policies.27 Predictably, this is precisely what the Biden Administration has done, using the discretionary authority to create programs out of whole cloth, arguably without statutory authority,28 for what it refers to as climate-smart agricultural practices.29 The merits of the various programs funded through the CCC discretionary authority is not the focus of this discussion. The major problem is that the Secre- tary of Agriculture is empowered to use a slush fund. Billions of dollars are being used for programs that Congress never envisioned or intended. Concern about this type of abuse is not new. In fact, from 2012 to 2017, Congress expressly limited the Agriculture Secretary’s discretionary spending authority under the Charter Act.30 And this was before the recent massive discretionary CCC spending occurred. The use of the discretionary power is a separation of powers problem, with Congress abrogating its spending power. This power is ripe for abuse—as could be expected with any slush fund—and it is a possible way to get around the farm bill process to achieve policy goals not secured during the legislative process. The next Administration should: l Refrain from using section 5 discretionary authority. The USDA can address this abuse on its own by following the lead of most Administrations and not using this discretionary authority. — 295 — Department of Agriculture l Promote legislative fixes to address abuse. Ideally, Congress would repeal the Secretary’s discretionary authority under section 5 of the Charter Act. There is no reason to maintain such authority. If Congress needs to spend money to assist farmers, it has legislative tools, including the farm bill and the annual appropriations process, to do so in a timely fashion. While not an ideal solution, Congress could also amend the Charter Act to require prior congressional approval through duly enacted legislation before any money is spent. At a minimum, Congress should amend the Charter Act to: l Limit spending to directly help farmers and ranchers address issues due to unforeseen events not already covered by existing programs and that constitute genuine emergencies that must be addressed immediately. l Prohibit the CCC from being used to assist parties beyond farmers and ranchers. l Clarify that spending is only to address problems that are temporary in nature and ensure that funding is targeted to address such problems. l Tighten the discretion within section 5 and identify ways for improper application of the Charter Act to be challenged in court. Reform Farm Subsidies. Too often, agricultural policy becomes synonymous with farm subsidy policy. This is unfortunate, because making them synony- mous fails to recognize that agricultural policy covers a wide range of issues, including issues that are outside the proper scope of the USDA, such as environ- mental regulation. However, there is no question that farm subsidies are an important issue within agricultural policy that should be addressed by any incoming Adminis- tration. There are several principles that even subsidy supporters would likely agree upon, including the need to reduce market distortions. Subsidies should not influence planting decisions, discourage proper risk management and innovation, incentivize planting on environmentally sensitive land, or create barriers to entry for new farmers. Farm subsidies can lead to these market distortions and there- fore, it would hardly be controversial to ensure that any subsidy scheme should be designed to avoid such problems. The overall goal should be to eliminate subsidy dependence. Despite what might be conventional wisdom, many farmers receive few to no subsidies,31 with most subsidies going to only a handful of commodities. According to the Congres- sional Research Service (CRS), from 2014 to 2016, 94 percent of farm program
Introduction
— 287 — Section 3: The General Welfare In Chapter 19, on the Department of Transportation (DOT), former DOT deputy assistant director for research and technology Diana Furchtgott-Roth writes, “In pursuit of an anti-fossil-fuel climate agenda never approved by Congress, the Biden Administration has raised fuel economy requirements to levels that cannot real- istically be met” by most gas-powered cars, thereby reducing Americans’ freedom while increasing costs. Lastly, former acting chief of staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs Brooks D. Tucker, echoing concerns expressed in other chapters, writes in Chapter 20 that the Veterans Affairs (VA) must be “accountable to the needs and problems of veterans, not subservient to the parochial preferences of the bureaucracy.” — 289 — 10 DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE Daren Bakst Am erican farmers efficiently and safely produce food to meet the needs of in dividuals around the globe. Because of the innovation and resilience of the nation’s farmers, American agriculture is a model for the world. If farmers are allowed to operate without unnecessary government intervention, American agriculture will continue to flourish, producing plentiful, safe, nutritious, and affordable food. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can and should play a limited role, with much of its focus on removing governmental barriers that hinder food pro- duction or otherwise undermine efforts to meet consumer demand. The USDA should recognize what should be self-evident: Agricultural production should first and foremost be focused on efficiently producing safe food. This chapter provides important background on the USDA and identifies many of the USDA-specific issues that will be faced by an incoming Administration. It provides specific recommendations for the next Administration about how to address these issues and lays out a conservative vision for what the USDA should look like in the future. MISSION STATEMENT The current mission statement as stated by the Biden Administration highlights the broad scope of the USDA: To serve all Americans by providing effective, innovative, science-based public policy leadership in agriculture, food and nutrition, natural resource
Introduction
— 419 — Environmental Protection Agency disasters in decades, including the Flint, Michigan, water crisis in 20144 and the Gold King Mine spill in 2015.5 Beyond creating such immediate and tangible harm in various communities, an EPA led by activism and a disregard for the law has generated uncertainty in the regulated community, vendetta-driven6 enforcement, weighted analytics, increased costs, and diminished trust in final agency actions. Although the U.S. environmental story is very positive, there has been a return to fear-based rhetoric within the agency, especially as it pertains to the perceived threat of climate change. Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs. In effect, the Biden EPA has once again presented a false choice to the American people: that they have to choose between a healthy environment and a strong, growing economy. Historical Role and Purpose. For many decades, rapid industrial activity with an unorganized approach to environmental standards significantly degraded the country’s environment. Particle pollution in the form of a thick, fog-like haze that at times was laced with harmful metals was a frequent occurrence across the country.7 More than 40 percent of communities failed to meet basic water quality standards, and in 1969, the Cuyahoga River infamously caught fire after sparks from a passing train ignited debris in the water, which was filled with heavy indus- trial waste.8 EPA was established on December 2, 1970, following a call by President Rich- ard Nixon to “rationally and systematically” organize existing piecemeal efforts to clean up and protect the environment.9 Under Reorganization Plan No. 3, the EPA was to initiate a “coordinated attack on the pollutants which debase the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land that grows our food.”10 Numerous authorities were consolidated and given to the EPA including research, monitor- ing, standard-setting, and enforcement activities. The mission to protect public health and the environment was born, and the first Administrator was sworn in on December 4, 1970. Congress followed suit with the landmark Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA)11 and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972.12 The subsequent Clean Air Act Amendments of 199013 played a significant role in the expansion of EPA’s responsi- bilities and legal authority with the agency then being tasked with the development of new regulatory mechanisms that included, among other things, cap-and-trade programs for the control of sulfur dioxide and technological standards for nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, a vastly expanded hazardous air pollutant program, a federal operating permit program, and new regulations gov- erning phaseout of the production of ozone-depleting substances in conjunction with U.S. ratification of the Montreal Protocol in 1988.14 — 420 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Subsequently, especially during the Obama Administration, EPA experienced massive growth as it was used to pursue far-reaching political goals to the point where its current activities and staffing levels far exceeded its congressional man- dates and purpose. This expansive status is entirely unnecessary: It has nothing to do with improving either the environment or public health. The EPA’s initial success was driven by clear mandates, a streamlined structure, recognition of the states’ prominent role, and built-in accountability. Fulfilling the agency’s mis- sion in a manner consistent with a limited-government approach proved to be extremely effective during the agency’s infancy. Back to Basics. EPA’s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government. This will require significant restructuring and streamlining of the agency to reflect the following: l State Leadership. EPA should build earnest relationships with state and local officials and assume a more supportive role by sharing resources and expertise, recognizing that the primary role in making choices about the environment belongs to the people who live in it. l Accountable Progress. Regulatory efforts should focus on addressing tangible environmental problems with practical, cost-beneficial, affordable solutions to clean up the air, water, and soil, and the results should be measured and tracked by simple metrics that are available to the public. l Streamlined Process. Duplicative, wasteful, or superfluous programs that do not tangibly support the agency’s mission should be eliminated, and a structured management program should be designed to assist state and local governments in protecting public health and the environment. l Healthy, Thriving Communities. EPA should consider and reduce as much as possible the economic costs of its actions on local communities to help them thrive and prosper. l Compliance Before Enforcement. EPA should foster cooperative relationships with the regulated community, especially small businesses, that encourage compliance over enforcement. l Transparent Science and Regulatory Analysis. EPA should make public and take comment on all scientific studies and analyses that support regulatory decision-making.
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.