Farm groups are anxious to have a farm bill passed by the lame duck Congress. That still seems possible, but a contentious difference between the House and Senate versions of the bill regarding nutrition programs seems to be one of the big holdups.
It’s no surprise to us that it is the welfare program that is again holding up the farm bill.
The 2014 Farm Bill expired at the end of September. Both House and Senate agriculture committee leaders had vowed that new legislation would be passed in time to replace it.
The House passed its bill June 21, and the Senate followed a week later with its own version. That left more than three months for a conference committee to work out the differences and get a bill passed before the deadline.
There are some major differences between the bills. The Senate bill, for example, sought to limit the amount of payments available to any one farming operation. The House bill, on the other hand, made it easier for more family members within a farming operation to qualify for payments.
But one of the most contentious difference is in provisions regarding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the $70 billion a year welfare program formerly known as food stamps.
The House bill tightens work requirements for SNAP recipients, forcing most adult recipients under 60 who don’t have children under 6 years old to prove each month that they have worked or participated in a work program or are exempt. It passed with only a two-vote margin and without a single Democrat vote.
No such provisions were included in the Senate version. Republicans on the Senate Ag Committee say the work requirement is a nonstarter in the Senate, where 60 votes are required to close debate and bring a measure to a vote.
So once again, it appears the nutrition program has brought progress on the bill to a halt.
Decades ago Congress decided to put food stamp and school lunch funding into the farm bill. The thinking goes that urban legislators don’t really care much for commodity subsidies, crop insurance and dairy pricing, but they do care about nutrition programs that impact their constituents. Lumped in with the welfare programs urban legislators do care about, the farm expenditures seem like small potatoes that aren’t worth a fight.
We admit there was probably some logic behind that thinking. But in practice, the thing that was supposed to grease the skids seems to always throw the farm bill off the rails.
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