The Democratic leader on the House Agriculture Committee said that “you can’t fix a bad bill,” so when the committee meets on Wednesday to vote on the proposed farm bill, “We’re going to ask a bunch of questions and vote no.” Interviewed on Farm Journal’s AgriTalk program, Collin Peterson said he did not plan to offer amendments to the bill drafted by chairman Michael Conaway.
“I’m sure they could potentially pass this on the floor,” said Peterson, referring to the Republican-drafted bill. “If this bill goes to conference, I’m not going to defend” it in negotiations with the Senate over the final version of the farm bill.
Conaway’s bill would require as many as 8 million “work-capable” adults to work at least 20 hours a week or spend an equal amount of time in workfare or job-training programs to qualify for food stamps. The states would be given $1 billion a year to pay for the training programs. An estimated 3 million people would be assigned to those programs.
Peterson said the SNAP revisions were the same sort of proposal that led to House defeat of the farm bill in 2013. He also said the farm supports in the 2018 bill were likely to be inadequate.
The anti-hunger group Bread for the World said it opposed the 2018 bill “because it proposes changes to SNAP that will put millions of women, children, and families at risk of hunger.” The bill provides too little funding for the jobs programs to be effective, it said, and “today’s evidence does not demonstrate that strict work requirements on assistance programs, such as SNAP, effectively reduce poverty.”