Hidden Spending Measures Playing Chicken with Shutdown

Photo Credit: Robert F. Bukaty, APTemporary spending bills approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate include measures that would require the Obama administration to rescind strict new rules on the poultry industry.

Advocates for independent chicken farmers want lawmakers to drop the language, which had been sought by poultry processors and their trade groups. The rules give farmers more clout in their business dealings with the processors.

“It’s a totally outrageous for a handful of multinational corporations to waltz in while we are trying to keep the government open and insert these” provisions, said Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, one of the groups siding with roughly 32,000 farmers who produce the broiler chickens that end up on supermarket shelves.

The most recent showdown between the two adversaries illustrates the way interest groups, large and small, are racing to shape whatever stopgap spending bill Congress passes to end the partial government shutdown that began Oct. 1.

Medical-device manufacturers, for instance, are lobbying aggressively to repeal a 2.3% excise tax imposed on their industry as part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Some of the medical-device makers’ supporters on Capitol Hill want to insert the language in either a temporary spending bill restarting government operations or in another measure to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew has warned the government will run out of borrowed money Oct. 17, requiring action by Congress.

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