The Republican-controlled House Agriculture Committee, with four Democratic crossovers, approved a farm bill early Friday that increases crop subsidy and crop insurance spending by one-third, cuts SNAP by $30 billion, and repudiates a Biden administration initiative on climate mitigation. Democrats said the bill has no chance of becoming law and might not survive a vote on the House floor because it lacks bipartisan support.
Agriculture Committee chair Glenn Thompson said that previous farm bills had unfairly favored public nutrition programs, “so I have no shame transitioning available resources” into programs popular in farm country. Roughly $4 of every $5 in the farm bill would be spent on SNAP and a handful of other public nutrition programs. “From production and processing to delivery and consumption, this bill strengthens the rural economy across every region, state, and district,” he said.
During a marathon meeting, Republicans swept aside Democratic amendments to prevent the SNAP cuts, to restore the “guardrails” on a windfall $15 billion in climate funding, and to protect USDA access to a $30 billion reserve fund. The session began Thursday shortly after 11 a.m. ET, recessed for 90 minutes in the afternoon, and ended on Friday at 12:32 a.m. after an argument over child labor in meatpacking plants.
Committee members approved the bill on a 33-21 roll call. Democratic Reps. Yadira Caraveo of Colorado, Don Davis of North Carolina, Eric Sorensen of Illinois, and Sanford Bishop of Georgia joined all Republicans in voting for the bill. “That was bipartisan,” said Thompson.
“Everyone knows this terrible bill will never become law. The Senate will not accept it, and the administration will not accept it,” said Georgia Rep. David Scott, the senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee.
Senate Agriculture Committee chair Debbie Stabenow said that “key parts of the House bill split the farm bill coalition in a way that makes it impossible to achieve the votes to become law.” She said bipartisan support was essential for farm bill success. John Boozman of Arkansas, the senior Republican on the Senate committee, said, “This is the first real progress toward a new farm bill becoming law.”
House Republicans would pay for their $53 billion in increased farm spending by cutting off USDA discretion to use the reserve fund. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the savings will be a much smaller $8 billion. “We continue to work with them” to get a larger estimate, said Thompson. “Let’s call it what it is, a budget gimmick,” said Bishop.
Democrats said the five-year bill was unacceptable because of its cuts in SNAP spending — the largest since the 1996 welfare law — and language allowing funding earmarked for climate programs to be spent on any conservation practice, whether or not it captured carbon or reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Republicans, who voted uniformly against the 2022 climate, healthcare and tax law, said there was no reason to honor its earmark on the $15 billion they would direct into USDA conservation programs.
“We have been communicating our red lines for 18 months,” said Rep. Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Democrat. “We are not hiding the ball here.”
Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett pointedly said that Democrats have been key to securing passage of major bills this year and that Republicans would need their help on the farm bill. “Democrats have held it down and made sure it got done,” she said, “but this [bill] is not the way.”
Thompson’s bill would increase statutory reference prices, the trigger points for crop subsidy payments, for row crops by 10 to 20 percent and raise the ceiling on subsidy payments by 24 percent, to $155,000 per person, per year. It also expands coverage through the Dairy Margin Coverage subsidy. And it overrides California’s Proposition 12 animal welfare law. “This legislation puts the farm in the farm bill,” said Rep. Barry Moore, Alabama Republican.
Cotton, rice, and peanuts, grown in the South, would see “much larger increases in payments” than corn, soybeans, and wheat, produced mostly in the Midwest and the Plains, said university analysts.
The SNAP cuts would be generated by requiring a cost-neutral outcome in future reviews of the cost of a healthy diet. Some $10 billion of the savings would be shifted to trade promotion, horticulture, and maintenance of ag research facilities. Thompson said the SNAP restriction was a reaction to the 2021 USDA review that resulted in a 21 percent increase in benefits. “Don’t think you have ownership of compassion,” he told Democrats. “I certainly intend no harm to this program.”
“Hunger is a policy choice,” said Rep. Jahana Hayes, Connecticut Democrat. “We cannot abandon these families.”
A video of the House Agriculture Committee debate on the farm bill is available here.
The House Agriculture Committee web page on the GOP bill is available here.