The Agriculture Department’s use of its traditional farm safety net for climate-focused spending reemerged at a Senate hearing Tuesday, as the nominee for the agency’s top legal post questioned how far the USDA secretary can go in unilaterally spending the department’s funds.
Tyler Clarkson, the Trump administration’s pick for USDA general counsel, told Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) at his confirmation hearing that the Biden administration used “quite a bit of legal creativity” in tapping the department’s Commodity Credit Corp. for a climate-smart agriculture grant program in 2022.
The issue carries echoes of the first Trump administration, when then-Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue drained the CCC to pay farmers who had suffered from President Donald Trump’s tariff-fueled trade wars.
Using the CCC for tariff relief didn’t come up at the hearing. But the Biden administration’s approach on climate-smart grants, Clarkson said, “strained the statutory text and practice in a manner that I don’t think I anticipate countenancing” if confirmed.
