Following congressional failure to approve a new farm bill last year, the House and Senate have punted the 2018 version into the future, with the latest continuing resolution extending the 2018 legislation through 2025.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill, however, have expressed frustration over the fact they haven’t been able to pass a new version.
“I think it’s obnoxious — now, let me back up — I think it’s unfortunate that we haven’t gotten our work done yet, and I … we need to make it an absolute top priority to get that as soon as we can next year,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD), who sits on the House Committee on Agriculture, told the Washington Examiner earlier this month.
In years past, the farm bill had bipartisan support. It combines resources for such programs as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program with updates to farm supports, including commodity price guarantees and crop insurance. Many elements of the next farm bill remain in limbo, but its passage this past Congress and next year mostly hinges on the future of SNAP.
Many Republicans have opposed expanding food stamps under SNAP, which accounts for more than 80% of the bill.
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA), the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, released his proposed farm bill this May. One of its provisions would limit the ability of the Department of Agriculture to update its Thrifty Food Plan, which is the program on which SNAP benefit levels are based. This amounts to a $30 billion cut to SNAP over a decade, made in response to the Biden administration’s role in updating the Thrifty Food Plan, which resulted in a nearly 30% hike in benefit levels.
Republicans frame their position on amending SNAP payments not as cuts but as an attempt to reduce wasteful and unnecessary spending. Still, Republicans leading the House committee made it their focus to cut SNAP benefits, which afford millions of low-income Americans food stamps. Democrats have vowed not to vote in favor of the legislation if it includes cuts to SNAP.
“If they screw around with SNAP, there will be no farm bill,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) told the Hill during the 2023 farm bill fight.
Seventy-five percent of SNAP recipients fall at or below the poverty line, and 1 in 5 reports having no other source of income besides food stamps.
“The reality is that we have a hunger problem in this country. And the SNAP benefit to begin with is not adequate,” said McGovern, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee.
With Republicans expected to have a narrow two-seat majority in the House next Congress, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) warned earlier this month that any new farm bill next year must be balanced and bipartisan, or it will face similar opposition from his party that, in part, prevented its passage this year.
“We, of course, have to address the looming expiration of the farm bill,” Jeffries said. “And that issue must also be dealt with in a bipartisan way and in a manner consistent with protecting farmers, protecting the agricultural industry, and protecting nutritional assistance for vulnerable Americans.”
“It remains to be seen what the process will be in connection with the farm bill,” Jeffries added, highlighting its uncertain future.
Jeffries has frequently said he will work with Republicans in a bipartisan manner, consistently pointing to Republicans’ slim majority and indicating the House may need help from Democrats to pass key legislation.
House Republicans on the Agriculture Committee, with the help of a handful of Democrats, advanced their farm bill version in May, but retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), chairwoman on the Senate Agriculture Committee, did not introduce the Senate version of the bill until November.
Stabenow previously suggested to the Washington Examiner she preferred another extension of the last farm bill that she helped craft in 2018 than accept changes she did not agree with.
“I have an incentive to get a good bill done. I do not have an incentive to do a bad bill,” she said this May.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said he was frustrated that Stabenow waited to release the text, saying its release in November did not give Senate Republicans ample opportunity to review it.
“It’s a sad commentary that the chairwoman had two years to put out a farm bill and hasn’t done it,” Grassley said in November before Stabenow’s unveiling. “Farmers are entitled to a five-year farm bill — the certainty that comes from it. So, in the meantime, we’re going to have a one-year extension of the existing farm bill.”
Even so, Stabenow said in June that, in her experience working on six farm bills and leading three of them, “this has been the most frustrating time.”
“It’s so much more partisan than usual and particularly around food assistance,” she said.
President-elect Donald Trump and his GOP allies in Congress have an aggressive agenda coming in the new year, including plans for mass deportation, tax cuts, and tariffs on imports, which has some lawmakers concerned about the farm bill’s ability to be prioritized in the 119th Congress.
“We have got a real pileup of major legislative packages we’ve got to deal with in 2025. I am as frustrated as I can be that we haven’t gotten this gosh darn farm bill done,” Johnson said.
Businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, co-chairman of the Department of Government Efficiency, said SNAP is wasteful and can be cut, claiming on social media that $1 billion is “wasted *every month* on ineligible SNAP (food stamp) benefits” due to overpayments and fraudsters preying on beneficiaries.
When Trump was president in 2020, he proposed more sweeping cuts to SNAP than Thompson’s bill, suggesting a 30% cut over the next 10 years.
It is unclear if Trump would achieve his goals of cutting SNAP benefits via executive order if the farm bill is unable to cut benefits in such a way.
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Trump’s team did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s multiple requests for comment on the topic.
However, Grassley recently expressed confidence “that the new Republican Congress and new Republican president will pass a five-year farm bill next year.”