An attempt by House Democrats to reunite the farm bill with the food stamp bill - the two had been packaged together for decades until House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., separated the two this summer - was narrowly defeated on Saturday, according to Politico.
While most of the nation's attention is focused on the Oct. 17 deadline to raise the debt ceiling and the government shutdown there is a bitter battle occurring within Congress over a five-year, $500 billion bill that would subsidize agriculture as well as provide for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
A consensus was agreed to on the farm portion of the bill that would expand crop insurance by 10 percent. The fight is over SNAP funding; House Republicans want to slice $39 billion off of the program in the next decade while Democrats want to cut the program by about one tenth of that amount, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
The version put forward by House GOP would make nearly 4 million people currently receiving SNAP ineligible for the program. Other portions of the bill, including a provision requiring drug screening for applicants to the program, would make it more difficult to receive the assistance, the Christian Science Monitor reports.
The two bills had been packaged together since the 1970's since they were complimentary and it would have been difficult to get enough support to pass either alone. Rural areas that rely on the farm bill are generally Republican leaning while urban areas that tend to vote Democrat are more likely to need SNAP.
Cantor separated the two so that it would be easier for lawmakers to pass reforms on the food stamp side of the bill given the current makeup of the House. In addition to separating the two programs Cantor has also set it up so that the farm portion is voted on every five years while the nutrition portion is voted on every 3 years. The fact that the vote to reunite the bill was so close, 204-195, shows that there are members on both sides of the aisle that object to the separation, according to Politico.
"The farm bill's nutrition program needs to be on the same time line as the bill's other provisions," Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said. "It makes no sense to decouple farm and food programs, they go hand in hand. I worry that separating the two of them sets us on a path to no farm bill in the future. The Senate farm bill preserves the partnership between farm and food programs, and we should defer to that approach."
