The Agriculture Department has run the $74-billion-a-year food stamp program since it was created half a century ago — “a mistake,” according to the platform approved by delegates at the Republican National Convention. The campaign document says Republicans “will … separate the administration of [food stamps] from the Department of Agriculture.”
The platform does not say who should operate food stamps. The USDA and state governments carry out the work now. The 2012 GOP platform said “Congress should consider block-granting that program to the states, along with the other domestic nutrition programs.” Child nutrition programs cost about $22 billion annually. The 2016 platform called for tougher rules on able-bodied adults, now limited to 90 days of benefits in a three-year period except in times of high unemployment.
Early this year, House Republicans proposed a 20-percent cut in food-stamp funding over 10 years, including conversion of the program to a block grant in 2021. Similar proposals have been raised during the past five years. A child-nutrition bill approved by the House Education Committee in the spring includes a three-state test of a block grant for school lunch and other school food programs.
Separating food stamps from USDA control could make it more difficult for Congress to pass the so-called farm bills that periodically update U.S. farm and food policy. Food stamps are the largest item in the USDA budget. The House defeated a farm bill in June 2013 in a tug-of-war between Tea Party-influenced Republicans who voted for the biggest cut in a generation in food stamps and Democratic defenders of the program. Farm lobbyists say that if food stamps and farm programs are split, rather than considered together in a broad-ranging farm bill, neither might pass.
“It [the party platform] can change the way people think and the direction of the country,” said Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, a co-chair of the platform committee, in asking for adoption of a conservative platform.
In a chapter on agriculture, energy and the environment, the GOP vows to enact the 2018 farm law on time — Congress repeatedly has been at least one year late in passing farm bills since 1996 — and says farm subsidies must be cost-effective “while remaining affordable to the taxpayers.”
“Even so, the expansion of agricultural exports through the vigorous opening of new markets around the world is the surest path to farm security,” said the campaign document. Roughly one-fifth of U.S. farm output is exported.
“We encourage the cost-effective development of renewable energy sources — wind, solar, biomass, biofuel, geothermal and tidal energy — by private capital,” said the document, which says Republicans “intend to finish” the Keystone XL pipeline as “part of our commitment to North American energy security.”
With the federal government owning 640 million acres of land, mostly in the West, the platform calls for a timely and orderly mechanism “to convey certain federally controlled public lands to states.” To Republicans, “It is absurd to think that all that acreage must remain under the absentee ownership and management of official Washington.”
On immigration, the party platform says a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border is imperative, and use of the e-verify system, a database to assure job applicants are legally available for employment, “must be made mandatory nationwide.” The platform also calls for reform of the guest-worker program “to eliminate fraud, improve efficiency and ensure that they serve the national interest.”
Agricultural groups have backed comprehensive immigration reform, including a new guest-worker program, to ensure they have a legal and reliable workforce. A large portion of farmworkers are believed to be undocumented.
Without mentioning the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the platform said, “Significant trade agreements should not be rushed or undertaken in a Lame Duck Congress.” Backers of the 12-nation free-trade pact are pressing for a post-election vote on TPP. The presumed GOP presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, oppose TPP. Farm groups generally support it as a way to greater access to the Japanese market.