House Agriculture Committee

The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Republican Michael Conaway of Texas, routinely mixes the language of religious social conservatives into his far- policy speeches, most recently at USDA's annual Outlook Forum. The remarks stood out at a conference at which partisanship usually is muffled and in a sector where differences usually are defined by what crops you grow, not by what you believe.

Everything will be on the table when the House Agriculture Committee reviews the $70 billion-a-year food stamp program as part of writing the 2018 farm bill, said chairman Michael Conaway. "We will propose meaningful reforms to SNAP," said Conaway, using the abbreviation for the program's formal name, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

After two years of hearings on the "past, present and future" of food stamps, the premier U.S. antihunger program, the House Agriculture Committee chairman says states "must ensure those who can work do" so. "There is concern that general work requirements are not adequately enforced," said chairman Michael Conaway in a 66-page report, referring to provisions dating from 1971 that working-age recipients should register for work and accept a suitable job if it is offered.

Senior Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee stood firm against cuts in the food stamp program at the end of two-year review inaugurated by chairman Michael Conaway, a Texas Republican. The largest U.S. antihunger program is a popular target for Republicans, who say it costs too much — $74 billion in fiscal 2015 — because it provides benefits to too many people.

Political newcomer Roger Marshall, an obstetrician and self-described peacemaker, defeated three-term Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a die-hard Tea Party conservative who wore out his welcome, in a landslide in the Republican primary in the "Big First" congressional district of Kansas.

Traditionally conservative farm groups, from the Kansas Farm Bureau to the National Association of Wheat Growers, lined up against Rep. Tim Huelskamp, a Tea Party favorite, ahead of today’s Republican primary in the “Big First” congressional district of Kansas.

Less than two weeks before the Aug. 2 primary election, both candidates for the Republican nomination in the "Big First" U.S. House district in Kansas share a priority — getting a seat on the House Agriculture Committee after the first gap in membership in a century.

Rick Bertrand hopes to turn conservative firebrand Steve King, who backed ethanol skeptic Ted Cruz in the Iowa presidential caucuses, into the first Republican incumbent to lose a House primary race this year. If Bertrand scores in the Iowa primary today, it will be an upset if only because incumbents have won renomination 98 percent of the time since 1946.

The largest U.S. anti-hunger program would be cut by 20 percent in the coming decade under the budget resolution now awaiting a vote on the House floor. Combined, the cuts total more than $150 billion, says the think-tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

At its first business meeting of the year, the House Agriculture Committee passed around computer tablets instead of paper copies of the business at hand, which happened to be a letter to the Budget Committee. "I would like to call your attention to the letter in your iPads," said chairman Michael Conaway in speeding through an introduction of the new equipment, which he described as "an effort to go green, save trees, that sort of stuff."