As the House Agriculture Committee begins to draft this year’s Farm Bill, there are still many unknowns: when will it receive floor time, will it pass this year, and how much Freedom Caucus members will change the legislation?
The Farm Bill comes up for re-authorization every five years and is historically one of the more bipartisan bills Congress passes. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-PA) wants to ensure it stays that way.
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Thompson has done a number of official and unofficial listening sessions across the country, traveling to nearly 40 states and getting input from people on what they need the most out of this year’s Farm Bill.
“The Committee has spent thousands of hours listening to agricultural stakeholders across the country," Thompson said in his opening statement at a recent hearing. “As we continue drafting, it is my goal that the 2023 Farm Bill will be one that strengthens national security, restores the farm safety net, and revitalizes rural America.”
The committee has also been working to educate members and staff on what the Farm Bill is and why it’s important. Over 260 members of Congress have never voted on a Farm Bill before.
The current plan is to have the draft text ready to go once the House gets back in session so they can get right to work when they’re granted floor time, according to a committee aide.
The Farm Bill covers a wide array of agricultural and nutritional policies, including crop insurance for farmers, conservation efforts, and food assistance programs.
The biggest chunk of any farm bill, and a main sticking point for Republicans, will be the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
According to the Congressional Budget Office’s assessment, the Farm Bill is expected to be a $1.51 trillion bill over the span of 10 years, which would be a record level.
Of that $1.51 trillion total spending projection, $1.2 trillion of that is under the Food Stamp title, which is something hardline conservatives have been pushing to scale back and reform this Congress.
“You have a faction of the caucus that wants to see that gutted,” one committee aide said. “But if history is precedent, it doesn't matter if SNAP is refined, rearranged, used as deficit reduction, folks who don't like to vote on farm policy. And so I do think that that's something that we're continuing to not only hear but figure out where some of those breaks are and understanding of the farm bill when you have this many people who've never voted on one.”
But, with the massive push this Congress from hardline conservative members to cut spending, claw back SNAP benefits, and use spending bills to root out “woke” ideologies within the federal government, there is a possibility the Farm Bill falls victim to that as well.
An example of the pushback the Farm Bill faces heading into the latter half of the year is how some members of the Freedom Caucus view the bill. Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), a Freedom Caucus member, said that the Farm Bill historically “represents the worst of Washington and the worst of politics.”
“75% of it, which has nothing to do with farm or agriculture, the Food Stamp part of it, essentially is utilized to buy Democrat votes for the farm portion — Democrats don't have any farmers in their districts,” Good said. “And then the farm portion is utilized to buy Republican votes for the SNAP program. So neither one is held accountable and scrutinized and vetted, and held up to challenge appropriately, because you put the two together, which violates the principles of single-issue legislation.”
But, Thompson doesn’t want to see major reforms to the food assistance portion of the Farm Bill, according to the committee aide, but he also does not believe “indiscriminate spending” to be the answer. Rather, he wants to see four principles upheld. One of those is innovation in the use of technology; another is for financial independence to be a strong point of the food stamp program; integrity and general health and well-being and a commitment to ensuring that whatever they do in that space, it needs to have health as a basic tenant of it.
In addition, a big question is how much will the bill change. Good clearly is not happy with the food assistance portion of the bill, but as has been seen with other historically bipartisan bills this Congress, the Freedom Caucus has forced votes on amendments that change the bills significantly.
A committee aide said while Thompson is committed to ensuring the bill stays bipartisan, he’s not naive to the political makeup of the House. But, he plans on staying in full control of the bill and ensuring it passes even if some members try to hijack the bill.
“I think these a lot of these guys are unrealistic,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-AR), a member of the House Agriculture Committee. “They need to read the Federalist Papers again. We have a Senate and a House, a bicameral. We have three branches of government with a slim majority in the House. You're not going to get everything you want. … So what we’re gonna see is basically what we've already agreed to with the President, and I think it's gonna be more modest changes. And some folks like doing root canal surgeries every day. But in the end, you're not going to force on the Senate what 20 People want in the house.”
Crop Insurance
Projected to be the second biggest portion of the Farm Bill is crop insurance.
Crop insurance “provides premium subsidies to farmers and subsidies to the private crop insurance companies who provide federal crop insurance to farmers to protect against losses in yield, crop revenue, or whole farm revenue.”
This is expected to cost $101 billion over the course of 10 years, according to CBO’s score.
Bacon said that crop insurance is one of the most important pieces of the farm bill to him and his constituents.
When there is a bad drought, and farmers aren’t able to produce as much of their crop, having crop insurance allows them to continue going for an additional year. For example, last year in his district, there was a bad drought where most of the farmers would have gotten very little income on their crop, but having crop insurance saved many of them and allowed them to continue through this year where it’s been more profitable.
“Without crop insurance, you will lose farmers in a bad year. And then you create food instability throughout the country because nobody's going to be able to pick up that farmland,” Bacon said.
The House Agriculture Committee aide said that while there might be tweaks to the crop insurance portion, it will stay in the bill.
“Most folks they want to protect crop insurance, right? They want to ensure that they have a Title One safety net that works,” the aide said.
When will it pass
The big question for many on Capitol Hill is when will the Farm Bill pass. Amid all the fighting in the House about appropriations and the backdrop of a potential government shutdown, the Farm Bill has taken a back seat.
Thompson’s plan is to have the text ready to go the second they are given floor time, but it could be as late as December before they are given that floor time, meaning a committee product will come out in November.
“Worst case, you're not going to see the bill necessarily until the beginning of the year,” the aide said. “But, the Chairman has committed every time someone tells him he can't he can't do it, he digs in even more. But he's also a realist, and we just have to wait and see when leadership can provide that floor time, and that's a process and of itself. I mean, to even get to the Rules Committee, you need a solid two weeks for amendments and all of that coordination and scheduling. So we will see.”
Even if it receives floor time in the House in December, there is still no guarantee that it will pass before the end of this year. The Senate will still need to pass its version of the Farm Bill, and then they will have to go to a conference and pass whatever comes out of there.
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It will, therefore, still be a tedious process once it makes it out of the House.
“If we're able to get to conference, is what that conference report will look like,” another House Agriculture Committee aide said. “Because you have to get a conference report that a very slim Republican majority can pass here. You have to get one that a slim Democrat majority has but then also that a Democrat president will sign. But the key driver in all this is that if we work on a Farm Bill in conference in this Congress, Chairman Thompson will chair that conference. And so he'll run that show.”