WASHINGTON (AP) — It isn’t just farmers who will benefit
from the sweeping farm bill that Congress has sent President Barack
Obama. There’s also help for rural towns, grocery stores in low-income
areas and, most notably, the nation’s 47 million food stamp recipients.
After
years of setbacks, the Senate passed the nearly $100 billion-a-year
measure Tuesday on a 62-38 vote. The White House said the president will
sign the bill Friday in Michigan, home state of Senate Agriculture
Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow.
Farmers in every region would still
receive generous subsidies — from Southern peanut growers to Midwest
corn farmers and dairies around the country. The support is designed to
provide a financial cushion in the face of unpredictable weather and
market conditions.
But the bulk of its cost is for the food stamp
program, which aids 1 in 7 Americans. The bill would cut food stamps by
$800 million a year, or around 1 percent.
House Republicans had
hoped to reduce the bill’s costs even further, pointing to a booming
agriculture sector in recent years and arguing that the now $80
billion-a-year food stamp program has spiraled out of control. The House
passed a bill in September that would have reduced the cost of food
stamps five times more than the eventual cut.
Those partisan
disagreements stalled the bill for more than two years, but
conservatives were eventually outnumbered as the Democratic Senate, the
White House and a still-powerful bipartisan coalition of farm-state
lawmakers pushed to get the bill done.
The White House had been
mostly quiet as Congress worked out its differences on the bill. But in a
statement after the vote, Obama said the legislation would reduce the
deficit "without gutting the vital assistance programs millions of
hardworking Americans count on to help put food on the table for their
families."
He said the farm bill isn’t perfect, "but on the whole,
it will make a positive difference not only for the rural economies
that grow America’s food, but for our nation."
Obama praised the
bill for getting rid of subsidies known as "direct payments," which are
paid to farmers whether they farm or not. Most of that program’s $4.5
billion annual cost was redirected into new, more politically defensible
subsidies that would kick in when a farmer has losses.
To gather
votes for the bill, Democrat Stabenow and her House counterpart, Rep.
Frank Lucas, R-Okla., included a major boost for crop insurance popular
in the Midwest, higher subsidies for Southern rice and peanut farmers
and land payments for Western states. The bill also sets policy for
hundreds of smaller programs, subsidies, loans and grants — from
research on wool to loans for honey producers to protections for the
catfish industry. The bill would provide assistance for rural Internet
services and boost organic agriculture.
Stabenow said the bill is
also intended to help consumers, boosting farmers markets, encouraging
local food production and seeking to improve access to grocery stores in
low-income communities.
"We worked long and hard to make sure
that policies worked for every region of the country, for all of the
different kinds of agricultural production we do in our country," she
said.
The regional incentives scattered throughout the bill helped
it pass easily in the House last week, 251-166. House leaders who had
objected to the legislation since 2011 softened their disapproval as
they sought to put the long-stalled bill behind them. Leaders in both
parties also have hoped to bolster rural candidates in this year’s
midterm elections.
Conservatives remained unhappy with the bill.
"How
are we supposed to restore the confidence of the American people with
this monstrosity?" said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. McCain pointed to
grants and subsidies for sheep marketing, for sushi rice, for the maple
syrup industry.
The $800 million-a-year savings in the food stamp
program would come from cracking down on some states that seek to boost
individual food stamp benefits by giving people small amounts of federal
heating assistance that they don’t need. That heating assistance,
sometimes as low as $1 per person, triggers higher benefits, and some
critics see that practice as circumventing the law. The compromise bill
would require states to give individual recipients at least $20 in
heating assistance before a higher food stamp benefit could kick in.
Some
Democrats still objected to the cuts, even though they are much lower
than what the House had sought. The Senate-passed farm bill had a $400
million annual cut to food stamps.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, a
longtime member of the Agriculture Committee, voted against the bill.
He cited provisions passed by the Senate and taken out of the final bill
that would have reduced the number of people associated with one farm
who can collect farm subsidies. Grassley has for years fought to lower
subsidies to the wealthiest farmers.
The bill does have a stricter
limit on the overall amount of money an individual farmer can receive —
$125,000 in a year, when some programs were previously unrestricted.
But the legislation otherwise continues a generous level of subsidies
for farmers.
In place of the direct payments, farmers of major row
crops — mostly corn, soybeans, wheat and rice — would now be able to
choose between subsidies that pay out when revenue drops or when prices
drop. Cotton and dairy supports were overhauled to similarly pay out
when farmers have losses. Those programs may kick in sooner than
expected as some crop prices have started to drop in recent months.
The
bill would save around $1.65 billion annually overall. But critics said
that under the new insurance-style programs, those savings could
disappear if the weather or the market doesn’t cooperate.
Craig
Cox of the Environmental Working Group, an organization that has fought
for subsidy reform for several years, said replacing the direct payments
with the new programs is simply a "bait and switch." He said there is
"the potential for really big payoffs."
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