Farm Bill Negotiations Resume With Deadline Looming
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With Congress returning to the Capitol, one of the major items on its year-end agenda is passing a Farm Bill, negotiations over which resumed this week after talks foundered in mid-November.As heard on the radio
Chief among the differences between separate House and Senate bills that passed their respective chambers earlier this year is the amount of funding that would be cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as SNAP or food stamps.
Under the House bill, SNAP funding would be cut by about $40 billion dollars over 10 years. It would also toughen the work and eligibility requirements of the program. The Senate bill would cut funding by $4 billion over the same time frame.
“The nutritional assistance side is certainly one of the big challenges,” said Republican Rep. Austin Scott, of Tifton, who’s part of a committee of senators and representatives tasked with striking a deal between the two proposals. Scott said negotiating a deal on those cuts is the biggest hurdle to passing a bill that’s more than a year overdue.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the SNAP program will cost the nation $764 billion dollars over the next 10 years at current funding levels, more than 3 quarters of the bill’s budget. And annually the program has more than doubled in cost in recent years, growing from $35 billion in 2007 to $80 billion in 2012.
Currently in Georgia, SNAP covers about 1.9 million people – an increase of about 890,000 since 2008.
Scott favors the House cuts, and said the states should manage their own SNAP program. Scott adds that reforms to SNAP qualifications are also needed, and said those who work should only be able to use the program for a limited time. He said that would help keep people from abusing the system.
“We’ve all been in line at the grocery store behind the person who pulls out the SNAP card and then turns around and pays for the rest of it with a roll of hundred dollar bills,” Scott said.
Democratic Rep. David Scott is not on the negotiating committee, but does sit on the committee that passed the House bill. He is against the House’s proposed major cuts, and favors those proposed by the Senate.
“The major people you’re hurting are the most vulnerable and we’ve got to protect those people, and that’s what the food nutrition program does,” David Scott said.
David Scott said he feels lawmakers could reach an agreement that would result in between $7 billion and $8 billion in cuts. Any more than that, he said, would hurt veterans and the working poor.
Both lawmakers say they’re confident a deal can be reached by the Jan. 1 deadline.
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