The Senate set up a confrontation with the House over U.S. food and farm policy for the next five years with a 2-to-1 rejection of punitive work requirements for SNAP recipients on Thursday. The Republican-controlled House, backed by the Trump administration, wants “work-capable” adults to work at least 20 hours a week to qualify for food stamps or spend equivalent time in job training or workfare.
Senators were presented with a proposal for a 25-hour-a-week work requirement for able-bodied adults that would also cover more families with young children than the House package. They defeated the idea, 68-30, shortly before passing their bipartisan farm bill, 86-11. Both the Senate and House bills would tweak crop subsidy programs created in 2014. The House would loosen payment limits, while the Senate would restrict eligibility to farmers, spouses, and one manager per farm.
Food stamps, which account for three-fourths of farm bill spending, are the salient issue in the broad-spectrum legislation. House Republican leaders decided to write welfare reform into the farm bill by broadening and toughening SNAP work requirements as well as tightening eligibility rules. An estimated 7 million people aged 18 to 59 would be affected. Recipients are currently obliged to register for work, to accept a suitable job if offered, and to take part in a state employment and training program if they are assigned to one.
Senate Agriculture chairman Pat Roberts declined to say how the strong Senate vote would affect negotiations with the House over SNAP. “Let’s not go down that road,” he told reporters.
With farmers worried about the potential impact of a trade war on their income, Roberts and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the senior Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, avoided votes on amendments to make wealthy farmers pay more for taxpayer-subsidized crop insurance and to scale back federal support of sugar growers. A plan by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah to revamp commodity “checkoff” programs was defeated, 38-57.
The chief reform in the Senate bill, pursued for years by Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, is to allow only one person per farm to collect up to $125,000 a year in subsidies as a manager. Roberts and Stabenow wove the provision into an updated version of the bill this week rather than put it to a vote.
“I hope to get conferees appointed quickly. We need to act,” said Roberts, looking ahead to the next step for the farm bill. A small group of negotiators from the House and Senate will reconcile differences to produce a compromise that must be passed by both chambers and signed by the president to become law. “I look forward to working together to send a strong, new farm bill to the president’s desk,” said House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway.
Although Congress has made speedy progress so far, arduous negotiations are expected because the House and Senate took markedly different positions on SNAP work requirements and divergent partisan paths to assemble their bills. In the narrowly divided Senate, Roberts and Stabenow insisted on a bill that would appeal to both parties and pass easily. In the House, where Republicans hold a 42-seat margin over Democrats, Conaway wrote a bill to appeal to conservatives, with no input from Democrats. The House passed its bill a week ago, 213-211, on its second try, with only Republicans voting in favor. Conaway said he expects stronger SNAP work requirements will be part of the final farm bill.
Besides the more stringent work requirements, the SNAP amendment sponsored by Sens. John Kennedy of Louisiana, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Lee would have required the EBT cards used by SNAP recipients to carry a photo of the recipient, as well as naming family members who could use the card. Grocers would have been required to ask for photo ID of family members, including children, who presented the card to buy food. Stabenow said retailers opposed the photo ID idea.
“The fact that [the amendment] went down indicated people do feel this bill is a good balance,” said Stabenow.
President Zippy Duvall of the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest U.S. farm group, said the Senate vote “could not have come at a better time. America’s farmers and ranchers continue to face a challenging agricultural economy, a shaky outlook for our export markets, and a dire ag labor shortage.” The National Farmers Union, the second-largest farm group, said lawmakers should make “additional improvements and investment in the farm bill during House-Senate negotiations.”