Chairman Heinrich Welcomes Committee Passage of His Agriculture Appropriations Bill that Includes Over $15 Million for N.M. Projects
Legislation fully funds WIC, supports rural communities, protects food supply, keeps families safe, and invests in agricultural research
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, welcomed the Senate Appropriations Committee’s bipartisan, unanimous passage of his Fiscal Year 25 (FY25) Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Drug Administration Appropriations Bill. This legislation includes over $15 million in investments for 18 local projects across New Mexico.
“The Senate Appropriations Committee is proving, yet again, that it is possible to find common ground across party lines on funding bills that put the interests of working families first,” said Heinrich, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, and the Food and Drug Administration. “The investments we have included in this bipartisan bill will improve access to needed prescriptions, help American farmers produce healthy food, and grow economic opportunities in our rural communities. We maintained our full support for vital nutrition programs like WIC that ensure women, infants, and children can keep healthy food on the table. We also included continued funding for the Southwest Border Regional Commission, to further grow the region’s economy. Now that we have passed this bill out of committee on a strong, bipartisan vote, I will keep working, every step of the way, to get these investments across the finish line and into New Mexico.”
Heinrich’s full statement presenting his bill in the Committee hearing today is available here.
A full summary of Heinrich’s bill is here.
The Appropriations Committee also passed the FY25 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill and the Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill. Next, the bills will be considered by the full United States Senate.
Key Points & Highlights
Nutrition Assistance: The bill delivers critical new resources to fully fund WIC and ensure all eligible women, infants, and children can get the nutrition they need. It also protects vital nutrition assistance programs for families across the country.
- WIC: The bill fully funds the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) — which serves 7 million women and kids nationwide — by providing $7.697 billion for the program, a $667 million increase over Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24). Similar to what Heinrich secured in FY24, this increase will ensure that all eligible participants can continue to rely on the essential nutrition assistance and support provided by WIC. The bill also continues full funding for additional fruit and vegetable benefits.
- SNAP: The bill fully funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to serve an estimated 42 million people per month — and does not include restrictive new policy riders.
- Child Nutrition: The bill fully funds Child Nutrition Programs — like the School Lunch program, school breakfast program, and Summer EBT program — to ensure schools can continue to serve healthy meals to all eligible children. In 2025, this funding will help serve an estimated 5 billion lunches and 2.7 billion breakfasts to kids across the country.
Agricultural Research: The bill provides $1.87 billion, a $29 million increase over FY24, for the Agricultural Research Service, the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) premiere in-house research agency. The bill also funds the National Institute of Food and Agriculture at $1.681 billion, with additional focus on providing tools and resources for farmers to build resilience to climate-driven extreme weather and improve soil health, furthering many of the priorities in Heinrich’s Agriculture Resilience Act.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA): The bill provides $6.87 billion in total funding for the FDA, which includes $3.544 billion in discretionary funding — a $22 million increase over FY24. The bill provides an increase of $1 million to conduct oversight of cosmetics; an increase of $15 million for food safety; an increase of $3 million for the Neurology Drug Program; $2 million in new funding for the recently announced Tobacco Task Force, and $1 million more for antimicrobial research. It also includes $55 million for the 21st Century Cures Act and direction for the FDA to streamline the drug discovery process to support innovation and the accelerated approval of safe new drugs, a long-time priority of Heinrich. Heinrich also included language directing FDA to remedy its failure to enforce the standards included in the Tobacco Control Act of 2009 and stop illegal e-cigarette products from being sold to children in the United States, an issue that was also the subject of Heinrich’s prior questioning of the FDA Commissioner.
Rental Assistance: The bill provides $1.691 billion for rental assistance — an increase of $83 million over FY24 — to help ensure Americans living in rural areas have access to safe and affordable housing. The bill also includes an increase of up to $1 billion in Single Family Direct Loans to help more low-income families and first-time home buyers get mortgages.
Food Safety: The bill provides $1.233 billion for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), an increase of $43 million over FY24. This funding will help ensure FSIS can continue its vital work protecting America’s food supply without being forced to reduce its staffing levels, which would jeopardize food safety and exacerbate supply chain delays. The bill also provides an increase of $2 million to expand the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Ready Response Corp, which provides support for large animal health outbreaks, such as avian influenza, and an increase of $3 million to improve animal welfare inspections and enforcement activities. This follows Heinrich’s questioning of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack on the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak.
Promoting Competition: The bill provides an increase of $1 million over FY24 for enforcement of the Packers and Stockyards Act to promote competition and prevent unfair or deceptive practices and monopolies. The bill also supports local food system and meat processing investments. The bill further provides an additional $2 million in funding for a pilot Bison Production and Marketing Grant Program within the Agriculture Marketing Service to expand markets for private and Tribal bison producers, following Heinrich’s creation of this program in the FY24 Agriculture Appropriations Bill.
International Food Aid: The bill provides $1.721 billion for the Food for Peace program, a $101 million increase to base funding over FY24, and $250 million, a $10 million increase over FY24, for the McGovern-Dole Food for Education program. This funding will continue to save lives as hunger is increasing around the world.
Conservation and Wildlife: The bill provides $1.019 billion, a $68 million increase over FY24, for conservation programs, including additional funding for Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) staffing and technical assistance to support voluntary conservation practices on private land. It also prioritizes multi-benefit projects in the Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations program to support drought resilience in the western United States, which follows Heinrich’s letter to Secretary Vilsack on this topic. The bill further provides an increase of $5.5 million to manage the feral hog population and support non-lethal strategies to reduce wildlife-livestock conflict, and includes direction to expand the Migratory Big Game and Working Lands for Wildlife Initiatives, a long-time Heinrich priority. Finally, the bill maintains funding for research and management of Chronic Wasting Disease, which funds the program created by Heinrich’s Chronic Wasting Disease Research and Management Act, which was passed into law in 2023.
Economic Development: The bill includes a $2 million investment in the Southwest Border Commission (SBRC), which supports economic and community development in southern New Mexico. The Commission is one of eight authorized federal regional commissions and authorities. In the previous three annual federal spending bills, Heinrich successfully secured the first-ever congressional investments to finally allow the SBRC to jump-start and expand its operations.
Tribal Communities: The bill increases funding for the Office of Tribal Relations, and directs USDA to continue supporting tribal sovereignty and develop a plan for expanding tribal self-determination to more parts of the Department. The bill maintains funding for the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR) Tribal Demonstration Pilot Program and directs USDA to do more to allow tribes to include traditional foods. It also provides $700,000 for processing and federal inspection of Tribal bison, supporting indigenous food sovereignty by enabling Tribes to include bison raised on their own lands to be included in federal nutrition programs like school meals. This follows the hearing on Heinrich’s Indian Buffalo Management Act last month.
Congressionally Directed Spending
Heinrich successfully included over $10 million in investments for the following 13 local projects in the bill:
- $2,000,000 for Valencia County and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to design a project to improve flood control, retain flood waters, and redirect flood waters to the Rio Grande, while also reducing the sediment load to provide protection to the City of Belén and surrounding areas.
- $2,000,000 for the Doña Ana County Flood Commission and USDA NRCS to design a flood control project to incorporate engineered flood control structures and watershed restoration, with the majority of engineered structures located near the Village of Rincon.
- $1,696,000 for Roadrunner Food Bank to buy an accessible bus to outfit as a mobile market for SNAP beneficiaries in Southwestern New Mexico, including for residents in Catron, Grant, Hidalgo, Sierra, and Luna Counties.
- $1,100,000 for Rio Arriba County to purchase communications equipment for Rio Arriba County Volunteer Fire Departments.
- $1,000,000 for the City of Portales to purchase and equip a new fire pump apparatus.
- $500,000 for the Village of Questa to purchase and fully equip a wildland fire engine.
- $488,000 for Community Outreach and Patient Empowerment, Inc. (COPE) to expand the Navajo Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program (Navajo FVRx) to reach 1000 family beneficiaries, with a focus on pregnant and postpartum women, children, and individuals with chronic diseases.
- $467,000 for New Mexico State University to conduct research to manage weeds in perennial crops.
- $275,000 for Gila Regional Medical Center in Silver City to upgrade and replace boilers, chilled and hot water pumps, the emergency back up generator, water supply and sewer lines.
- $263,000 for Conservation Legacy to renovate and repair a building in Zuni Pueblo to become the Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps’ permanent home and a community resource.
- $228,000 for the Town of Red River to upgrade outdated public safety equipment.
- $200,000 for the NMSU San Juan County Extension program to purchase and install kitchen and classroom equipment, which will be utilized by Extension programs and partners including the SNAP-education program, 4-H youth development program, and New Farmer training program participants.
- $61,000 for Meals on Wheels New Mexico to provide medically tailored meal delivery to support homebound seniors in Bernalillo and Sandoval Counties.
Heinrich and U.S. Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) successfully included more than $3.8 million for the following four projects:
- $3,000,000 for HELP New Mexico, Inc. to renovate classroom spaces to expand early childhood services in Luna County.
- $563,000 for Truchas Volunteer Fire Department to purchase and equip a new fire pump apparatus.
- $275,000 for the Food Bank of Eastern New Mexico to purchase a temperature-controlled mobile food distribution truck to transport and distribute fresh food directly to people in rural and underserved communities.
- $110,000 for the National Indian Youth Leadership Project to purchase a property near the Zuni Mountains to hold year-round, intensive weekend outdoor programming and traditional Navajo activities.
Between the Senate and House Agriculture Appropriations bills, Heinrich and his N.M. Delegation colleagues also secured Committee support of the following:
- Heinrich, Luján, and U.S. Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) included nearly $3 million for two projects:
- $1,513,000 for the Town of Estancia to plan, design, and renovate the Estancia Town Hall and Community Center, which was included in the Senate bill.
- $1,200,000 for the Town of Bernalillo to assist in planning, designing, and constructing a new fire station, which was included the House bill.
- Heinrich, Luján, and U.S. Representative Gabe Vasquez (D-N.M.) included $1,000,000 in the House bill for the Town of Mesilla to renovate the Mesilla Town Hall.
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