Does not matter: It’s the Senate’s turn on covid relief — Heavy metals in baby food

Mar 01, 2021

With help from Helena Bottemiller Evich and Steven Overly

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DRIVING THE WEEK

HERE COMES THE HARD PART: The House narrowly passed President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Now it's on to the Senate, where Democrats will have to contend with an even slimmer majority and thorny procedural hurdles as they try to clear the legislation by the end of the week.

The biggest snag is a $15-per-hour minimum wage hike, which the Senate parliamentarian has already decided does not comply with the rules of budget reconciliation (the fast-track process Democrats are using to pass the stimulus bill without any Republican votes).

— That provision is expected to be scrapped, which could frustrate progressive House Democrats, who will be needed to pass the amended bill one more time before it goes to the White House for Biden's signature.

Ag changes get the axe: Before the House took up the legislation, Democratic committee leaders quietly stripped out language in the bill that would have authorized federal payments to farmers who lost crops to natural disasters including "high winds or derechos," like the powerful wind storm that flattened Midwestern cornfields last August.

Pros will recall that the provision was added during a House Agriculture Committee markup last month, when Iowa Democrat Cindy Axne voted with Republicans to adopt an amendment from Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) — one of the only cracks in Democrats' effort to avoid substantial changes to the legislation.

Something fishy? In another late change, Democrats on Friday cut out references to seafood processing facilities and vessels in the agricultural aid section. They also removed "seafood" from a provision directing the Agriculture Department to purchase and redistribute various farm goods to needy families.

HAPPY MONDAY, MAR. 1! Welcome to your Weekly Ag report, where eating a pizza while skydiving doesn't seem like the best way to enjoy a slice. Send tips to rmccrimmon@politico.com and @ryanmccrimmon, and follow us @Morning_Ag.

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DEEP DIVE

FDA UNDER FIRE OVER HEAVY METALS IN BABY FOOD: A House Oversight subcommittee report last month finding popular baby food companies knowingly sold products with concerning levels of heavy metals has raised fresh questions about the lack of regulation from FDA.

The agency has yet to take any action on heavy metals, despite having spent three years quietly exploring the issue of toxic contaminants in all foods during the Trump administration, Helena reports.

The backstory: FDA in 2017 launched a working group to look at heavy metals and other contaminants in food, cosmetics and supplements — a move that was partly a reaction to an EPA study from earlier that year that found food was a surprisingly significant source of lead exposure for young children.

Are kids eating more lead than we thought? A chart that was buried in supplementary material in the study showed that about half of blood lead exposure for most children between the ages of 1 and 6 comes from food. The next biggest contributors: soil and dust (including from lead-based paint), air and water.

Why it matters: Lead exposure remains a significant public health problem in the United States. One study estimated that preventing all lead exposure in just the babies born in the year 2018, for example, would deliver $80 billion in societal benefits, in large part due to the increased earnings potential of children with higher IQs and fewer behavioral and health problems.

Capitol Hill is lighting a fire: The House Oversight subcommittee is planning to do more oversight on baby food, a senior Democratic committee aide told POLITICO. It makes sense to first focus on babies and small children because they are the most vulnerable to the developmental harm from heavy metals, the aide said. The subcommittee is working on a bill that would require FDA to come up with standards for heavy metals in baby foods and put in place testing requirements, among other things.

Expect to hear more about this: As scientists have begun to better understand the health risks from long-term, low-level exposure to toxins like heavy metals, and labs have grown better at detecting contaminants at very low levels, more attention has turned to the food supply. There is more to come on all of this.

Related: Meanwhile, the Biden administration is promising to clean up contamination in the nation's water supply, including toxic "forever chemicals" known as PFAS. But upgrading water infrastructure could raise costs for utilities and potentially cut off some of the poorest Americans. Pro Energy's Annie Snider explains.

Climate Change

WHAT'S THE COST OF CARBON? Biden is bringing back an Obama-era policy to raise the government's official "cost" of greenhouse gases — but he stopped short of lifting the cost estimate to higher levels that climate scientists say are justified by new research. Still, the move will make it easier for federal agencies to take aggressive steps to confront global warming, write POLITICO's Lorraine Woellert and Zack Colman.

The new math: The policy pegs the cost of carbon at $51 per ton released into the atmosphere. That's far above the $8 cost used by the Trump administration and on par with the calculation used during the Obama administration, which was the first to try to quantify the social and economic costs of greenhouse gas emissions. It's a complex process that involves trying to measure the long-term effect on health care costs, property damage and financial losses caused by extreme weather, for example.

Why it matters: The higher price point will factor into decisions made by regulators and businesses alike, across industries like energy, transportation, manufacturing and forestry. It also gives Biden and Democrats in Congress new ammunition to fight for taxes or other policies to curb climate change.

One caveat: The current number is only temporary. A new Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases is due to issue a final calculation by January.

JOIN WEDNESDAY FOR A PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH NRCC CHAIR TOM EMMER : House Republicans surprised many observers in November flipping 15 seats and defeating several Democratic freshmen who delivered the House majority in 2018. Then the Jan. 6 insurrection set off an internal battle within the GOP, including among top House leaders. Join Playbook co-author Rachael Bade for a conversation with Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, to discuss his strategy for the 2022 midterm elections, President Donald Trump's role in the party, and the continued fallout from the assault on the Capitol. REGISTER HERE

Row Crops

— The FCC has finalized a $3.2 billion program to help low-income households pay their monthly internet bills, a first-of-its-kind effort to close the digital divide in underserved areas where many families lack reliable broadband access. The emergency subsidies were approved by Congress in December and could help offset costs by as much as $50 a month. The Washington Post has more.

— Before taking up the coronavirus relief bill on Friday, the House also cleared a sweeping conservation package to protect almost 1.5 million acres of public land and prohibit new resource extraction around the Grand Canyon and Colorado's Thompson Divide. But the bill's fate in the Senate is unclear, writes Pro Energy's Anthony Adragna.

— EU nations are rolling out climate plans that will do next to nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions this decade, according to a scathing U.N. report on Friday. The 75 countries that submitted climate blueprints to the U.N. would reduce emissions by just 2.8 percent in 2030 under their proposals, POLITICO's Karl Mathiesen reports from Brussels.

— House Ag member Jim Hagedorn (R-Minn.) filed legislation to change the way certain farmers and ranchers report income when applying for emergency loans under the Paycheck Protection Program. The bipartisan bill would let producers classified as partnerships use gross income, rather than net income, in order to help them maximize loan amounts. Details here.

— The U.S. lost 4,400 farms last year, leaving just over 2 million agricultural operations remaining across the country. The losses were heaviest in the nation's largest farming regions, namely California and the Midwest, according to USDA data mapped out by the American Farm Bureau Federation.

— Former Rep. Susan Molinari (R-N.Y.) was tapped to co-chair the American Italian Food Coalition, alongside former Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), our Pro Trade friends tell MA. Molinari was Google's chief lobbyist from 2012 to 2019. The coalition represents 450 Italian companies seeking to sell their products in the U.S.

— Virginia's legislature voted to fully legalize marijuana for adult use, making it the first state in the Old South to allow recreational cannabis. It's the 16th state overall to adopt such legislation, though sales won't begin until 2024, per Pro Cannabis' Mona Zhang.

— Howard Rubin was named chief operating officer of the Farm Credit System Insurance Corporation, following the retirement of Rick Pfitzinger, the agency announced. Rubin was previously FCSIC's chief risk officer.

THAT'S ALL FOR MA! Drop us a line: rmccrimmon@politico.com ; hbottemiller@politico.com; lcrampton@politico.com; jyearwood@politico.com and pjoshi@politico.com.