WASHINGTON (AP) — A sweeping farm bill that Congress sent to President Obama Tuesday has something for almost everyone, from the nation’s 47 million food stamp recipients to Southern peanut growers, Midwest corn farmers and the maple syrup industry in the Northeast.
After years of setbacks, the Senate sent the nearly $100 billion-a-year measure to President Barack Obama. The White House said the president will sign the bill on Friday in Michigan, the home state of Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow.
The Senate passed the bill 68-32 after House passage last week. The bill provides a financial cushion for farmers who face unpredictable weather and market conditions. It also provides subsidies for rural communities and environmentally-sensitive land. But the bulk of its cost is for the food stamp program which aids one in seven Americans. The bill would cut food stamps by $800 million a year, or around one percent.
House Republicans had hoped to reduce the bill’s costs even further, pointing to a booming agriculture sector in recent years and arguing that the now $80 billion-a-year food stamp program has spiraled out of control. The House passed a bill in September that would have made a cut to food stamps that was five times more than the eventual cut.
Those partisan disagreements stalled the bill for more than two years but conservatives were eventually outnumbered as the Democratic Senate, the White House and a still-powerful bipartisan coalition of farm-state lawmakers pushed to get the bill done.
The White House has been mostly quiet as Congress worked out its differences on the bill. But, in a statement after the vote, Obama said the bill would reduce the deficit “without gutting the vital assistance programs millions of hardworking Americans count on to help put food on the table for their families.”
He said the farm bill isn’t perfect “but, on the whole, it will make a positive difference not only for the rural economies that grow America’s food but for our nation.”
Obama praised the bill for getting rid of controversial subsidies known as direct payments, which are paid to farmers whether they farm or not. Most of that program’s $4.5 billion annual cost was redirected into new, more politically defensible subsidies that would kick in when a farmer has losses.
To gather votes for the bill, Stabenow and her House counterpart, Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., included a major boost for crop insurance popular in the Midwest, higher subsidies for Southern rice and peanut farmers and land payments for Western states. The bill also sets policy for hundreds of smaller programs, subsidies, loans and grants — from research on wool to loans for honey producers to protections for the catfish industry. The bill would provide assistance for rural Internet services and boost organic agriculture.
Stabenow said the bill is also intended to help consumers, boosting farmers markets and encouraging local food production.
The regional incentives scattered throughout the bill helped it pass easily in the House last week, 251-166. House leaders who had objected to the legislation since 2011 softened their disapproval as they sought to put the long-stalled bill behind them. Leaders in both parties also have hoped to bolster rural candidates in this year’s midterm elections.
Conservatives remained unhappy with the bill.
“It’s mind-boggling, the sum of money that’s spent on farm subsidies, duplicative nutrition and development assistance programs and special interest pet projects,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The $800 million-a-year savings in the food stamp program would come from cracking down on some states that seek to boost individual food stamp benefits by giving people small amounts of federal heating assistance that they don’t need. That heating assistance, sometimes as low as $1 per person, triggers higher benefits and some critics see that practice as circumventing the law. The compromise bill would require states to give individual recipients at least $20 in heating assistance before a higher food stamp benefit could kick in.
Some Democrats still objected to the cuts, even though they are much lower than what the House had sought. The Senate-passed farm bill had a $400 million annual cut to food stamps.
“This bill will result in less food on the table for children, seniors and veterans who deserve better from this Congress, while corporations continue to receive guaranteed federal handouts,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said. “I cannot vote for it.”
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