CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
July 17, 2012 – 10:52 p.m.
Rural-Urban Farm Bill Alliance Shows Strains
By Ellyn Ferguson, CQ Staff
For nearly 40 years, rural House members and senators have relied on a political union with their urban and suburban counterparts to pass farm bills. Farm state lawmakers got the agriculture programs they wanted, and the urban-suburban members got the nutrition programs they considered a priority.
But Indiana Republican
“I’d like to see us split the bill. I think it’s time for us to move the ag parts away from the food stamps and nutrition title and have a real farm bill,” said Stutzman, a member of the Agriculture Committee. He voted against the committee bill July 12 because he wanted larger cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps.
Stutzman said separating the nutrition title, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of farm bill spending, could make the legislation more palatable to fiscal conservatives like himself. He has not talked with Agriculture Chairman
Leaders are reluctant to bring the House farm bill (
Longtime Alliance Under Stress
There’s speculation that the bill might not attract the 218 votes needed to pass if it comes to the floor.
Stutzman, a freshman, may not get far with the idea, but his sentiments indicate that a longstanding alliance is under stress.
That worries Dan Glickman, a former Kansas House Democrat who also served as Agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration.
Glickman, who is now chairman of the anti-hunger group Food Research and Action Center, said the “grand bargain” for farm and nutrition programs forged by former Sens. Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., and Bob Dole, R-Kan., has worked for nearly 40 years. But as nutrition programs have grown and as farm programs have changed, spending has shifted from a nearly 50-50 split between nutrition and agriculture programs in the 1990s to the current ratio of 80 percent for nutrition programs and 20 percent for agriculture, crop insurance, conservation and other related programs.
“There’s no question it is frayed,” Glickman said of the urban-rural relationship.
Glickman said the alliance of diverse interests has always been stronger in the Senate, where members are generally focused on finding a balance among constituencies. The Senate farm bill (
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Senate bill will cost $969 billion over 10 years, with $768 billion going toward nutrition programs, primarily SNAP.
Rural-Urban Farm Bill Alliance Shows Strains
Lobbyist Randy Russell, former chief of staff to Agriculture Secretary John R. Block during the Reagan administration, said nutrition programs have been “a powerful tool to get people who might otherwise not be interested in voting for programs that support production agriculture to support such a bill.”
Like Glickman, Russell thinks that the coalition has frayed with SNAP’s growth since 2008. He cited the recession, which pushed monthly participation to 46 million people, and the Obama administration’s infusion of stimulus money to provide a temporary boost in benefits.
“What we’re seeing is this tension that exists about the amount of money going to nutrition programs versus the other parts of the bill. There is tension given the overall debt and given the economic situation to address these program costs,” Russell added.
‘A Serious Mistake’
Senate Agriculture Chairwoman
“We’ve always had the food policy of the country move together. I think it would be a serious mistake,” she said. “The reality is, we have crop insurance when there’s an economic disaster for growers. We have food help when there is an economic disaster for a family. Overall for the country, it’s better to keep those two together.”
Managing costs, Stutzman said, is his goal. Dividing the committee-approved bill would give House members clear policy choices on agriculture and nutrition.
But that approach could spell danger for agriculture programs because fiscal conservatives may not like federal subsidies for crop insurance or a milk-supply management plan designed to decrease dairy production when prices could be depressed by surplus milk.
“With the direction that ag policy is going, I would hope enough members of Congress would respect agriculture, especially the difficult [times] now with drought,” Stutzman said. “That’s the most important part to rural America.”