The new farm bill should spend tens of billions of dollars more on crop subsidies and crop insurance while paring SNAP outlays, said Arkansas Sen. John Boozman in releasing the Senate GOP’s outline for farm bill discussions on Tuesday. “I hope that we can get a farm bill done” this year, he said.
If action lags, Congress will need to pass a second extension of current law so the farm program can remain in operation, but a decision on that can wait until the lame-duck session following the Nov. 5 elections, said Boozman, the senior Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee. Congress is eight months late in enacting a successor to the 2018 farm law.
Major elements of the Senate GOP framework mirror the five-year bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee on May 24, such as large increases in the so-called reference prices that trigger crop subsidy payments, making more land eligible for crop subsidies, requiring updates of SNAP benefit levels to be cost-neutral, and “loosening the guardrails” on how climate mitigation funding can be spent.
“Unfortunately, the framework…splits the broad farm bill coalition,” said Senate Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow. “It makes significant cuts to the family safety net that millions of Americans rely on and walks away from the progress we have made to address the climate crisis. Similar to the House, the framework also appears to propose spending far in excess of available funding.”
Stabenow has said repeatedly that she opposes all cuts in SNAP, and that the bonus $15 billion earmarked for climate mitigation through USDA conservation programs should be spent as specified in the 2022 climate, healthcare, and tax law.
“It is going to cost some money,” said Boozman when asked about the GOP’s proposed expansion of the farm safety net, which includes an average 15 percent increase in reference prices. During a briefing, Boozman cited the GOP catchphrase “more farm in the farm bill” and said high production costs made increases in farm supports imperative. “They (farmers) want something that will make a difference.”
Aides said the cost could be offset through savings within the farm bill baseline of $1.5 trillion over 10 years. It was unclear if nutrition funds would be shifted into farm supports. Roughly $4 of each $5 in the farm bill would go to public nutrition programs headlined by SNAP.
“We’re using the Sen. Stabenow approach,” said Boozman in turning aside repeated questions from reporters about farm bill costs. Stabenow released a farm bill proposal on May 1 that proposed an increase of at least 5 percent in reference prices. She said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would provide $5 billion to defray the additional cost of her plan.
The House Agriculture Committee bill was estimated to increase crop subsidy and crop insurance outlays by one third, or $53 billion. It offers increases of 10-20 percent in reference prices and raises the ceiling on subsidy payments by 24 percent, to $155,000 per person per year.
“There are stark differences between the two [Senate] outlines, and we urge Chairwoman Stabenow and ranking member Boozman to find common ground on the important issues that farmers and ranchers face,” said the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest U.S. farm group. “Having the Senate committee taking up a farm bill is the next logical step in the process of passing a farm bill this year,” said the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives.
In writing their framework, Senate Republicans ignored warnings from Democrats that they “cannot and will not accept” steps such as cuts in SNAP, said Georgia Rep. David Scott, the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. “The worst-kept secret in the agriculture community is that a farm bill with the Republican proposal on (SNAP) will never become law.”
To read Boozman’s statement about the farm bill framework or to read summaries of the package and section-by-section descriptions of the bill, click here.