With farm bill reauthorization coming up next year, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on Thursday focusing on SNAP, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of the bill’s budget. But foreshadowing what could be a messy process, Democratic and Republican lawmakers staked out familiar ground and sparred over the food assistance program.
Among the issues: whether Democrats will compromise on SNAP, the merits of the permanent benefits increase made last fall, and whether SNAP recipients’ purchases should be restricted to healthy foods.
Rep. Jahana Hayes, a Connecticut Democrat, said the 2023 farm bill will be unlike any before it, calling it “a seminal, historic piece of legislation.” The bill will be an opportunity to address the gaps in nutrition policy and food access that became painfully evident during the pandemic, she said.
SNAP is the country’s largest anti-hunger program, serving about 43 million Americans, 70 percent of whom are children, seniors, or disabled people, according to the USDA.
The 2018 farm bill mandated that the USDA review its Thrifty Food Plan, the model grocery basket it uses to set benefit amounts. In August, the agency updated the plan for the first time in more than 45 years, and boosted benefits by an average of about $36 per person, per month.
Stacy Dean, USDA deputy undersecretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services and a witness at the Thursday hearing, said that before the adjustment, SNAP was not enough to cover an adequate, healthy diet. “We certainly hope that with healthy food in reach, we will only strengthen SNAP’s impressive effects on families and children,” she said.
But Glenn Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, called the update “less than transparent and questionable.” He called it an exorbitantly expensive “scheme” that “consciously put a colossal financial and political target on any future farm bill.” He also said that many of the committee’s members first learned of the administration’s plans for the increase through a “coordinated effort by pro-poverty advocates and their media allies.”
“I don’t know about schemes or media plots,” responded Hayes. “But what I do know is that I have hungry people in my district.”
Hayes was also one of several lawmakers to raise concerns about hunger among veterans and members of the military — a problem that Dean said “merits bold action.” Last month, Hayes introduced the bipartisan Feed Hungry Veterans Act, which would make it easier for disabled veterans to qualify for SNAP. Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said that committee wants to look at pay for service members and adjust it. “There’s no reason why our junior enlisted should qualify for SNAP. We’ve got to do better there,” he said.
Several Republican lawmakers floated the idea of restricting the kinds of foods SNAP recipients can buy with their benefits. Georgia’s Austin Scott asked if it wouldn’t be better to move to a program like the Women, Infants, and Children program (WIC), which can be used only for a defined set of healthy foods instead of “soda pop and potato chips.”
Rep. Salud Carbajal, a California Democrat whose family received SNAP when he was a child, pointed out the disproportionate “over-obsession” with what low-income people buy with SNAP benefits. “I just wish some of my colleagues, my good friends on the other side of the aisle, were as dogged about the subsidies we give to certain industries and oil companies,” he said.
Dean noted that the USDA doesn’t have the authority to specify which products SNAP recipients can buy, noting that the definition of food used by the program is set by Congress.
She also tried to reframe the issue of dietary quality as a more generalized problem that affects all Americans — SNAP recipients or not — and will require a whole-of-government response, such as the Biden administration’s focus on nutrition security. “Overall, Americans’ eating habits and their impact on dietary health is alarming,” she said.
A number of lawmakers expressed worry about what will happen when temporary extra SNAP benefits put in place during the pandemic expire. As of February, the most recent month for which data are available, 15 million households were receiving the extra benefits, called emergency allotments, which boosted the average SNAP benefit by $82 per person. And as FERN recently reported, a number of states are already cutting these benefits. Lawmakers asked if there was a way to gradually decrease the benefits in order to avoid a “hunger cliff.”
Dean said the USDA is already working on strengthening the emergency food system before the temporary benefits end, and working with states to make sure they are planning for the change. She said the agency is less confident about ensuring continuity in the school meals program when pandemic waivers, which allowed most students to get free meals, expire on June 30. She encouraged Congress to find a way to extend these waivers.
Throughout the hearing, there were numerous signs that the farm bill reauthorization will be a contentious process at best. Several Republicans complained that Democrats consider SNAP untouchable. “I’m frustrated that my Democratic colleagues have already drawn a line in the sand that this program will not be touched in the next reauthorization of the farm bill,” said Thompson.
Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, denied that, saying, “Everybody is open to constructive ideas on how to make any program better and more responsive.”
But he also noted that Republicans in 2018 proposed cutting SNAP by $20 billion. “I would fight that tooth and nail,” he said.