Just as they did at committee level, House Democrats will show their opposition to the Republican-written farm bill by refusing to offer amendments during floor debate, said Rep. Collin Peterson on Wednesday. Democrats say the bill cannot be salvaged because of its overhaul of the food stamp program. At the same time, hard-line conservatives have begun to attack the bill’s farm subsidy provisions for “promoting dependency,” a criticism usually aimed at welfare programs.
“We’re not going to have any amendments,” said Peterson, the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. During an interview with broadcaster Mike Adams, Peterson said no Democrats — “none” — would vote for the bill, which was approved on a party-line vote in committee. The House could debate the bill as early as mid-May.
Refusing to propose changes to major legislation would be a novel form of protest for Democrats. The farm bill would spend around $87 billion a year, three-fourths of it on SNAP. The bill, drafted by House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway, would relax farm subsidy rules by expanding the list of relatives eligible for subsidies and by removing payment limits on some forms of corporate farming.
The committee-approved bill “is unacceptable,” said a coalition of 14 small-government and free-market groups in a letter to Congress. “It not only fails to make reforms to farm subsidies, but actually makes the subsidies worse. For example, it creates new ways to funnel more money to individuals, including to individuals who do not even farm.” The subsidy program, dating from the Depression era, is an outmoded form of central planning and guilty of “promoting dependency” when it should be “empowering individuals to succeed on their own.”
“There are many important and common sense reforms, including reducing premium subsidies, placing a cap on ARC and PLC costs, reforming the sugar program, prohibiting protection against shallow losses, requiring producers to choose between ARC/PLC and crop insurance, and strengthening means testing and payment limits,” said the letter, which calls for “a truly conservative and free-market farm bill.”
Until now, criticism of the bill came chiefly from urban Democrats and anti-hunger groups opposed to Conaway’s plan to tighten eligibility rules for SNAP and expand the number of people required to work at least 20 hours a week or spend equivalent time in job training or workfare to receive monthly benefits. Democrats say 1.6 million people would leave SNAP because of the changes, 1 million of them because of the work requirements and the monthly paperwork that will be needed to prove compliance.
“They’ll pass it or they won’t, depending on what happens,” said Peterson, who alluded to the defeat of a farm bill in 2013, when Tea Party-influenced House Republicans included the biggest cuts to food stamps in a generation. Democrats voted against the bill, as did a bloc of GOP conservatives who wanted deeper cuts, leaving the bill without a majority. The GOP-controlled House eventually passed two separate bills: a food stamp bill and a “farm-only” bill. It was months before House and Senate negotiators sewed the pieces together in a compromise version that was enacted in 2014.
Lawmakers say there is limited farm-country interest in the bill, compared to the headline issues of trade tensions with China, the No. 1 ag export market, and potential changes to the so-called ethanol mandate, an outlet for 35 percent or more of U.S. corn production. “People have an expectation of more or less status quo on the farm bill,” said University of Illinois economist Scott Irwin.
Leaders of the Senate and House Agriculture committees plan few changes in farm support and crop insurance programs from the 2014 law. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee say they want a broadly popular, bipartisan bill, a description that precludes major SNAP changes.
South Dakota Sen. John Thune, No. 3 among Republican leaders in the Senate, said the final version of the farm bill could be ready for President Trump’s signature by the end of September, reported the Pierre Capital Journal. Thune, a member of the Agriculture Committee, said the panel was expected to approve its version of the farm bill this month. He said he wants to expand the Conservation Reserve Program to 30 million acres from its current limit of 24 million acres and to create a new, shorter-term land-idling program patterned on the Conservation Reserve.
To listen to the Peterson interview on “Adams on Agriculture,” click here.