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The Senate reached a deal on amendments to the farm bill, which will allow them to begin voting today. In all, 73 mostly but not entirely germane amendments will be voted upon, stretched over two days, with the goal of wrapping up the bill by the end of the week.
So what is in this decade-long farm bill, potentially the biggest matter that Congress will legislate this year?
The new five-year measure would cost $969 billion over the next decade and includes $23.6 billion in proposed cuts, making it a slimmed-down version of legislation that historically served as one of the main opportunities for members of Congress to deliver pork-barrel spending to their constituents.
How does that $969 billion get split up? As this chart shows, most of it goes to the food stamp program. There are cuts in this area which Kirsten Gillibrand is trying to remove through an amendment that will get a vote. The cuts, mainly from disallowing food stamp benefits for some recipients of federal heating assistance, would translate into $90 a month reductions for hundreds of thousands of families. The House wants to cut far beyond the Senate’s $4.5 billion, including potentially block-granting the program.
The big change in this farm bill concerns the end of direct subsidy payments to farmers in favor of crop insurance (which farmers can purchase in case their crops fail or prices drop). The federal government will subsidize deductibles for the crop insurance, as a cushion for the end of direct payments.
In addition, there are various USDA conservation programs funded by the farm bill (albeit with some cuts), trade promotion programs, forestry programs, and biofuels and other energy programs).
David Rogers has more on the negotiations over amendments. And Philip Bump has a good list of the most important amendments. In addition to Gillibrand’s amendment on restoring funds from food stamp cuts, there are amendments to limit the crop insurance subsidies for higher-income farmers, to ban the ownership of livestock by meatpackers, and restoring funding for young farmer programs. Among the more ridiculous amendments include proposals to study the effects of the automatic cuts in December, and an amendment from Marco Rubio to “give merit-based pay raises to workers without seeking permission from union leaders,” a fairly transparent union-busting measure.
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They (Agribusiness) only allow “proposals” to cut food stamps. It is just a fake bargaining ploy to appease the neoliberals who will save the day and demand food stamps funding is not “cut”. Agribusiness is run by a similar corrupt group like the MIC. Without the food stamp program agribusiness and “super” markets like wal-mart, target etc. would suffer because food is artificially very expensive for the average consumer. Taxpayer funded subsidies for Farmers include the food purchased with food stamps.
$768.2 billion for food stamps? That’s a lot of net for the un-safe.
Has anyone ever seen what some of our “farmers” spend their profits/welfare on? Watch Tractor Pulling. I just wonder how these half a million dollar tractors are being paid for. Profits from the fields? Or how about corporate farm subsidy? Just a simple question.
It looks more like the “Food Stamps Bill” with a bit of pork added for wealthy land owners.
Basically every bill coming out of Congress is for wealthy land owners.
“The cuts, mainly from disallowing food stamp benefits for some recipients of federal heating assistance”
Last year the GOP tried to kill Americans by cutting the emergency heating funds in half. I got one tank of heating oil for the whole winter, about 3 weeks worth of heat. The GOP tried to kill me and my family, but we survived.
Now they are saying that because I got three weeks of heat my family should now starve to death? I don’t get to choose between freezing or starving to death, the GOP will decide how to kill me and my children.
I didn’t need foodstamps or heating assistance before the Republicans intentionally killed the global economy. My family were doing alright, we could afford to pay our rent and put gas in the car so I could get to work. But after 2008, my income was cut in half. Thanks to Republicans my family is 50% BELOW the official federal poverty level.
Republicans are EVIL. They are openly trying to kill American citizens by freezing or starving us.
“because food is artificially very expensive for the average consumer.” ; huh? Where does that idea come from? Pay the pickers a decent days wages for what they do and see how expensive food gets.
It is not what the laborer is paid that sets the price; it is the Corporate Farmer and the Corporate Grocery chain. If they were not so greedy the laborer could have a livable wage. The point is taxpayers pay for food stamps and the bulk of the money goes to Corporate pockets not the small family farmer.
“The big change in this farm bill concerns the end of direct subsidy payments to farmers in favor of crop insurance (which farmers can purchase in case their crops fail or prices drop).”; wait a second; crop insurance has been available to farmers for years and and hedging is how both agribiz and small farmers addressed price drops.
Here’s what the direct subsidy payments are/were about
Outside of getting paid for allowing the ground to lie fallow and that most of the payments went to a few, is this ‘new’ program really going to do anything besides address -possibly- those issues? ESPECIALLY if the proposed amendments fail?
And when I read this in the Rogers link, “That dynamic was important, perhaps, to getting the deal. Conservatives might grumble still that they didn’t get all their amendments. But there will be many more now than if Reid had been forced to go the cloture route and prevailed with Republicans like Roberts.” it sure sounds like the Dems caved once again.
See #9
Lose the partisanship. Republicans are only 50% of the problem, The other 50% wear the “D” label and claim to be on your side, when they’re actually behind you putting a knife in your back. Wise up or go to a site where partisanship is encouraged, like DailyKos.