News

Farm bill movement anticipated

We’ve heard this before, but it looks like Congress is ready to move forward on the farm bill.

Reports out of Washington indicate that a farm bill framework agreement could be released Wednesday followed by a meeting of the full farm bill conference committee on Thursday. 

However, there is potentially another fly in the ointment.  Some Democrats have suggested attaching an extension of unemployment benefits to the farm bill and using the farm bill’s savings to pay for that extension.  Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley thinks that’s a bad idea.

“We aren’t having direct payments because you can’t justify them when farm prices have been so high—here prior to right now—and we did it to save five billion dollars a year,” Grassley says. “I think that unemployment needs to be offset, but it ought to be offset with cuts in spending someplace else.”

Another big question is whether House Republicans will accept cuts to the food stamp program of eight billion dollars over 10 years.  The House version of the farm bill called for a SNAP cut of 39 billion dollars.

Add Comment

Your email address will not be published.


 

Stay Up to Date

Subscribe for our newsletter today and receive relevant news straight to your inbox!