Senate and House negotiators will make little progress during a pro forma public meeting today despite expressions of determination to agree on, and enact, a compromise farm bill before the 2014 farm policy law expires at the end of this month. Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the dogged advocate of stricter farm subsidy rules, said on Tuesday that he might vote against the farm bill if his payment limit provision is cut.
“I’m not saying that’s what I’m going to do, but it’s a possibility,” said Grassley, who is a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee but not a farm bill negotiator. During a teleconference, Grassley said his proposal, to limit subsidy payments to farmers, their spouses, and one “manager” per farm, was good policy and fiscally prudent. Farm bill negotiators are honor-bound to keep the language, he said, because “I got screwed out of it” during closed-door deliberations on the 2014 law.
Farm bill negotiators are expected to meet for up to four hours in a session consumed by opening statements from the 56 conferees, who are allowed to speak for three minutes each. No votes are planned.
SNAP is the major issue for negotiators to resolve but they also face disagreements on land stewardship and farm subsidies. All are contentious. The opening statements will provide a lay of the land, with indications of difficult legislative terrain dominated by food stamps, which account for three-fourths of farm bill spending. The Senate farm bill focuses on operational efficiencies in SNAP and leaves the program unchanged. The GOP-written House bill would expand the number of people obliged to work at least 20 hours a week to qualify for SNAP and would tighten eligibility rules as well, with a combined reduction of 2 million participants.
The House bill also would eliminate the green-payment Conservation Stewardship Program, cut overall spending on soil, water and wildlife conservation, and loosen the rules for collecting farm subsidies. It would allow nieces, nephews, and cousins to qualify for payments and remove the dollar limit on payments to some types of corporations. With Grassley’s language, the Senate would clamp down on payments to people who are not active farmers by requiring managers to perform at least 25 percent of the “total management hours” required annually for a farm or an annual minimum of 500 hours, which is less than 10 hours a week.