The long-awaited farm bill from Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), the third-ranked Senate Democrat and chairwoman of the chamber’s Agriculture Committee was introduced Monday, just weeks before benefits will run dry at year’s end.
But more is riding this go-around on the $1.5 trillion legislation that sets agriculture and nutrition policy every five years: it’s been operating on an extension for more than a year, chief Democratic architect Stabenow is retiring, and Republicans will soon control Washington.
“The foundation of every successful Farm Bill is built on holding together the broad, bipartisan Farm Bill coalition,” Stabenow said in a statement. “This is a strong bill that invests in all of agriculture, helps families put food on the table, supports rural prosperity, and holds that coalition together.”
Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), the panel’s top Republican set to take over as chairman when the GOP majority is seated in January, assailed the legislation and its timing as “insulting.”
“An 11th-hour partisan proposal released 415 days after the expiration of the current farm bill is insulting,” Boozman said in a statement. “America’s farmers deserve better.”
Industry opponents, such as the National Pork Producers Council, called Stabenow’s proposal “not a viable bill, as it fails to provide a solution to California Prop. 12,” which regulates the confinement of breeding pigs.
Conversely, MAZON, a non-profit that combats food insecurity, said in favor of Stabenow’s bill that the “stakes are simply too high for Congress to do anything less than to support those at risk of hunger.”
The 1,397-page text comes just weeks before Stabenow’s three-decade career in Congress will come to a close amid pressure to reauthorize a full five-year bill in must-pass government funding legislation in the lame-duck session. Among the added spending in Stabenow’s legislation is $20 billion for a farmer “safety net” for disaster assistance, $8.5 billion more for SNAP, and a roughly 5% uptick in commodity reference prices, according to a summary. The House’s version raised such reference prices by 10-20%.
But, with major outstanding partisan hurdles, lawmakers appear more poised to punt for the second year in a row with another one-year extension of policies first passed in 2018.
House Republicans on its Ag Committee, with the help of a handful of Democrats, advanced its farm bill version in May. Republicans have opposed expanding food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, an entitlement that accounts for more than a whopping 80% of the bill. The two parties have also dueled over climate change-related funding and support for commodities.
Stabenow previously suggested to the Washington Examiner she would rather pass another extension of the last farm bill that she helped craft in 2018 than accept changes she wouldn’t be able to stomach.
“I have an incentive to get a good bill done. I do not have an incentive to do a bad bill,” she said in May.
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) was elected as Stabenow’s successor in a battleground contest that was one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is set to become the top Democrat on Agriculture once Republicans take over, who said Stabenow’s “strong” legislation “will strengthen the farm safety net, support rural America, invest in conservation efforts, and help families put food on the table.”
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Prior to the November elections, the majority of House Republicans banded together to urge Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to make reauthorizing a five-year farm bill a top priority, which his office has said is among their year-end top priorities.
“Farmers and ranchers do not have the luxury of waiting until the next Congress for the enactment of an effective farm bill,” the Republicans wrote to Johnson.
