Are you old enough to remember when you could buy a ticket to a movie at any time and enter the darkened theater late? If so, you probably remember watching the beginning of the movie when it started again and leaving when you recognized the scene, "where we came in."

Reporters in Washington must have felt the same way Monday when Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced the federal USDA budget proposed for 2007.

In it, our hero, the fearless and always upbeat George W. Bush, has once again vowed to tame the government's raging deficit by slashing away at commodity payments and other USDA programs.

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As he did last year, the President once again proposes cutting subsidies to farmers by 5%. That's a 5% shave off those vital acronyms, your LDPs, your CCPs and your DPs.* And he would put a firm $250,000 cap on all commodity payments, including marketing loan gains. USDA would also end the rule that allows a farmer to collect payments from three separate legal entities. Together, the payment cap and 5% cut would save about $1 billion in 2007 and about $7.7 billion over 10 years.

In total, the USDA budget for its 2007 fiscal year (which starts next October) would be about $93 billion, down from $96 billion this year, Johanns said.

USDA isn't the only federal agency facing cuts, the Agriculture Secretary said. The federal belt-tightening is needed to deal with a growing federal deficit that threatens sustained economic growth.

"Farmers and ranchers across America know the importance of a healthy economy," Johanns said.

Washington reporters seemed to be expecting the same ending to this story as last year. Congress rejected both the 5% cut on commodity programs and a firm payment cap.

When asked how the Bush Administration aims to convince legislators to pass its budget, Johanns said that one of the key arguments against it - that the 2002 Farm Bill has proven to be less expensive than projected - isn't true.

CCC expected to spend $21 billion in 2006

"That in fact, is not going to be the case," Johanns said Monday. The USDA's Commodity Credit Corporation spent more than $20 billion in 2005 and is projected to spend $21 billion in 2006 before dropping back to $19 billion in 2007.

And, Johanns added, when Congress passed its long-term spending cuts early this year, some agricultural programs were cut, but not those for commodities. "These programs have by and large been spared from deficit reduction," he said.

Ferd Hoefner of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition said later that he's not certain how Congress will react. His group supports the Administration's proposal to cap commodity program payments at $250,000 but opposes other cuts that Bush proposed Monday to conservation and rural development programs.

The Administration also wants to cut spending on organic and sustainable agriculture research, a relatively small program funded at $16.4 million that the Administration would trim to $12.9 million.

"The only thing I feel fairly confident about is in going after sustainable and organic research, they [Congress] will reject that," Hoefner told Agriculture Online.

Avoiding other cuts may be harder, he said. That's because Congress has already counted savings in ag spending with "smoke and mirrors," that involve counting money authorized for spending but never appropriated as a budget cut. "There's none of that funny money carrying over this year, or very little of it, so it really puts their backs up against a wall."

Hoefner still would be surprised if Congress takes on any more agricultural spending cuts in an election year. Capping commodity payments at $250,000 isn't something that is likely to be tacked on to an annual appropriations bill, he said. Instead, that kind of change to the 2002 Farm Bill would more likely be an amendment to a long term cut in spending like the budget reconciliation bill Congress debated last year and recently passed. Although some members of Congress have proposed another reconciliation bill, Hoefner considers it unlikely.

Learn more: A summary of the Bush Administration's proposed agricultural budget is available on the White House OMB web site.

* For nonprogram crop farmers and the general public, LDP stands for loan deficiency payments, CCPs are countercyclical payments, and DPs are direct payments.