House Republicans are following the “same ideological strategy that led to the failures of farm bills on the House floor in 2014 and 2018,” said Georgia Rep. David Scott, the senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee. Republicans plan to tamper with future SNAP benefits, a red line for Democrats, said Scott in an essay.
The “ideological obsession” over SNAP among Republicans jeopardizes the chances of producing a bipartisan farm bill, said Scott. “However, the Republicans have admitted privately and publicly that they need Democratic votes to get any kind of a farm bill to the Senate.”
Chairman Glenn Thompson announced a week ago the House Agriculture Committee would vote on his version of the new farm bill before Memorial Day. It would require future recalculations of the cost of a healthy diet to be budget neutral, estimated to reduce future outlays by $30 billion. House and Senate Republicans say the Biden administration unfairly boosted SNAP benefits by an average of 25 percent during a review of the Thrifty Food Plan in 2021.
“Not a single dollar will be cut from current SNAP beneficiaries,” Thompson told the North American Agricultural Journalists in a summary of his forthcoming draft. It would be released a few days before the committee vote. Thompson would use money earmarked for climate mitigation more broadly among USDA conservation programs that serve goals beyond climate. He also would restrict USDA’s power use a $30 billion reserve fund.
In work on the 2014 and 2018 farm laws, the House defeated Republican proposals to tighten eligibility rules for SNAP and to slash food-stamp spending.
“For this farm bill, House Republicans are abandoning bipartisanship to follow the same partisan ideological strategy that led to the failures of farm bills on the House Floor in 2014 and 2018,” wrote Scott. “A bipartisan farm bill could succeed in a way that helps our farmers and the families they feed but Republicans have refused that approach and continue to insist on their SNAP benefit cuts.”
House Democrats would expand access to federally subsidized crop insurance and to enhance commodity support programs, said Scott.
Farm bill leaders in the House and Senate have been stymied for months by disagreements over crop subsidies, SNAP, and climate funding.