The Senate could vote on the $87 billion-a-year farm bill in mid-June, but the legislation won’t repeat the House’s attempt at major SNAP reform, said Agriculture Committee chairman Pat Roberts on Wednesday. “Even that name [reform] sets Democrats’ hair on fire,” he said. “We’re going to do this in a bipartisan way.”
Speaking at the Kansas Agriculture Roundup, Roberts said he would propose some changes to food stamps though not on the scale of the rejected House bill. Roberts and fellow Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran said they have stressed to President Trump the importance of avoiding damage to farm exports during trade disputes. “Obviously, China is a big issue now,” agreed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who said larger sales — up by $8 to $10 billion annually — were a U.S. goal in trade talks opening this weekend in Beijing.
Roberts responded “You bet” when moderator Greg Akagi asked if Congress would complete work on the 2018 farm bill before the 2014 law expires in four months, on Sept. 30. “We have a target date of June 6 — that may be a moving target” — for a committee vote on the Senate farm bill, said Roberts. “We hope to be on the floor the next week, maybe the 12th.” After the Senate passes a bill, “then we get down to arm wrestling” with the House.
Thirty Republicans joined a solid block of Democrats to defeat the GOP-drafted farm bill, 193-213, in the House on May 18. The flash point in the GOP-written bill was its plan to require “work-capable” adults aged 18 to 59 to work at least 20 hours a week or spend an equal amount of time in job training or workfare to qualify for food stamps. The bill also would expand the list of family members eligible to collect up to $125,000 a year in farm subsidies and remove payment limits on some types of corporate farms. House Republican leaders say they will try to revive the bill by June 22.
SNAP “is the key issue for many, many Democrats” in the Senate, said Roberts. “We would not have the votes to pass a farm bill in the Senate without SNAP.” The House farm bill would have limited support in the Senate, where Republicans hold a 51-49 margin over Democrats but where 60 votes are needed to prevent a filibuster. Roberts and the senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, Debbie Stabenow, have collaborated for months on a bipartisan bill.
Their bill will have more funding for rural economic development, said the chairman, and will try to increase conservation spending. It would “fix ARC to some degree,” but it will not change the acreage bases that determine land eligible for crop subsidies. Growers have complained of large county-to-county variation in payment rates for the insurance-like Agriculture Risk Coverage subsidy. Some lawmakers want to alter acreage bases to benefit Midwestern growers, said Roberts. “It’s not going to be in the bill if I have anything to do with it.”
SNAP might see changes to increase operating efficiency or prevent wasteful spending in some administrative accounts, said Roberts. Food stamps, which account for three-fourths of farm bill expenditures, help 40 million people buy groceries.
Moran and Roberts said they have told Trump repeatedly that agriculture should not be a pawn in the current trade turmoil. China, the No. 1 customer for U.S. farm exports, has threatened tariffs on soybeans, corn, sorghum, pork, beef, apples, ethanol, and other products in retaliation for threatened U.S. duties on Chinese goods. The White House announced plans for 25 percent tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese technology products as U.S. negotiators prepared to meet Chinese officials in coming days.
“I have had Kansas tell me the president knows what he’s doing when it comes to these trade agreements. I hope this is a negotiating tactic that works, but the risks are tremendous if we don’t get it right,” said Moran. “You put the weather and commodity prices together today and add the loss of exports, it’s a whole different world for the future of Kansas.”
Perdue has expressed confidence in Trump’s approach to bilateral trade negotiations and has been optimistic about talks for the new NAFTA. When the United States and China discussed trade earlier this month, USDA officials were part of the U.S. team, “enumerating the kinds of things that we want put on the list, $8 to $10 billion more of ag exports,” he said. The USDA estimates China will buy $21.6 billion worth of U.S. ag products this year.
A week ago, Perdue said Trump “has an ambition of $25 billion more” in annual sales to China. “We’re probably going to be at half that area right now as we … [start] working out the details of that.” During their Washington meeting, the U.S. and Chinese teams agreed that China would make “meaningful increases” in ag purchases. The United States could reach the $25 billion target in two to five years, Perdue said last week. Analysts, though, say it would be difficult to more than double sales to China in the near term.