work requirements

United in a bipartisan embrace, the House sent the status-quo 2018 farm bill to President Trump after a landslide 369-47 vote on Wednesday, with only a few Republicans openly lamenting that the bill will not impose stricter work requirements for SNAP recipients.

While some analysts expressed skepticism about passage of the farm bill, President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell discussed the bill among must-do legislation on Thursday for action in the brief congressional post-election session.

Congress is nearly a quarter of the way through its post-election session with no apparent compromise on SNAP work rules or other disputes in the farm bill. Nonetheless, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday that the farm bill is one of two items that “absolutely have to be accomplished” by year’s end.

Banking on Republican gains in the midterm elections, President Trump said Congress could wait until next year to pass the farm bill because "we don't have enough votes" now for stricter work requirements for millions of SNAP recipients. Trump, who signed an executive order in April calling for new and stronger work requirements for social programs, has sided with House Republicans on the major dispute of the 2018 farm bill, now nearly a month overdue.

The Trump administration’s budget-cutting plans for next year may well include a test, or even a full-scale revival, of “America’s Harvest Box,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Wednesday.

Congress could adjourn for this year without enacting a new farm bill because of the Senate vs. House standoff over SNAP, said Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, one of two senators on Tuesday to suggest an extension of the farm law that expired at the start of this week. President Trump has backed House Republicans in demanding stronger work requirements on a larger number of food stamp recipients.

Barring a dramatic breakthrough, farm-state lawmakers will miss their target of enacting the 2018 farm bill in the next six days, according to two of the Senate and House negotiators charged with finding a compromise. SNAP, specifically House Republicans' demands for stricter work requirements for food-stamp recipients, is the major obstacle for the conferees, but there are differences across all sections of the $87-billion-a-year legislation.

There is little point in writing a compromise version of the House and Senate farm bills if it does not include stronger work requirements for food stamp recipients, said analysts from think tanks favoring free enterprise and members of a group of state officials that promotes self-reliance.

With time short for agreement on the farm bill, House Republicans are insisting on a stronger work requirement as a condition of eligibility for SNAP. Over the weekend, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, "[H]aving a work requirement in food stamps, having an education requirement in food stamps, is the best possible way" to put Americans to work.

A small group of negotiators will write the final version of the $87-billion-a-year farm bill in the weeks ahead, and they are under pressure from high-ranking conservatives in Congress to require millions of people to work at least 20 hours a week to qualify for food stamps. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise said over the weekend that work requirements are "really important" in a booming economy.

Congress could send the final version of the 2018 farm bill to President Trump for enactment in early September, a little over a month from now, if negotiators live up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's outline. Work requirements for SNAP recipients will be the crucial issue; the House and Senate are polar opposites on the question.

The bipartisan Senate farm bill "misses key opportunities to reform" the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program by forgoing tougher work requirements for poor adults who want food stamps, said the White House on Tuesday, pointing to the salient feature of the Republican-written House farm bill.

The electoral circuitry to revive the Republican-written House farm bill this week looks like the mechanism of a Rube Goldberg machine. Republican leaders plan floor votes on two immigration bills, neither certain of passage, to generate support among hardline conservatives for the farm bill. A close vote is expected, just like the roll call that sank the bill a month ago.

The route to House passage of the farm bill is nothing like the speedy trip that Agriculture Committee chairman Michael Conaway envisioned early this year. Instead of motoring to a floor vote immediately after committee approval of the legislation, Conaway is crawling along in the parliamentary slow lane, trying to round up enough Republican support to pass the most partisan farm bill in years.

The Trump administration will hold states accountable "for transitioning able-bodied [SNAP] recipients permanently into the workforce," said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue in an essay that underlined the White House call for new or tougher work requirements in federal welfare programs. "Too many states have abandoned this goal of self-sufficiency."

Millions of poor Americans will gain the opportunity for a better way of life if Congress toughens the work requirements for SNAP recipients and offers job training to them, says conservative Texas Rep. Micheal Conaway, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. The Republican-controlled panel could approve Conaway's restructuring of the largest U.S. anti-hunger program today, clearing the politically charged bill for an election-year floor vote.