Don’t call it a budget bill. Call it the cruelest farm bill ever.
The House budget bill will make it easier for wealthy farmers to receive farm subsidies and harder for poor people to receive anti-hunger assistance.
The bill does this by seeking the biggest cut ever to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Some of that money will then help finance one of the biggest increases to farm subsidies in decades.
If it becomes law, the bill would dramatically reshape policies in ways that make it easier for rich people to collect farm subsidies and harder for poor people to eat – including four million children.
It’s easily the cruelest farm bill ever.
Here’s how.
Easier to collect subsidies
Some already wealthy people will likely love the cruelest farm bill ever, because they’d benefit from a provision changing the definition of a “qualified pass through entity.” The new definition would make it easier for the rich – including almost 80,000 people who live in cities, not on farms – to get farm subsidies, rather than just those farmers most in need of the support.
Every member of a farm organized as a joint venture, S corporation or limited liability corporation could collect a farm subsidy payment up to $155,000 each. More than 200,000 farms are organized as corporate farms in this way, and there is no limit on the number of farm “members” who can collect payments.
The bill would also increase the subsidy payment limit per person from $125,000 to $155,000 per year. And it would hike the price guarantee for the crops eligible for these subsidies by 10 to 20%. Farm subsidies are intended to go to farmers in their time of need, but the price guarantees in the budget bill would soar so high that some farmers would receive a payment every year.
And the bill would allow farmers who grow “covered commodities” like peanuts, rice and cotton to make 30 million additional acres of farmland eligible for farm subsidy payments – a 12% increase in the number of acres eligible for such payments.
New subsidies would also be created by the budget bill subsidies, especially for crop insurance agents and companies that already receive billions each year to write and sell insurance policies.
But the House saves its biggest giveaway for the largest and most successful farmers, many of whom already enjoy more than $1 million in annual average household income. The bill would eviscerate a long-standing income limit designed to prohibit millionaires from receiving disaster and conservation payments.
Restricting SNAP access
While the budget bill offers plenty of presents for certain wealthy people, it also includes provisions that would tighten and restrict access to anti-hunger assistance.
The bill would do this by restricting SNAP participation and extending adult work requirements to age 64, up from the current 54.
And it would cut the number of people eligible for SNAP by narrowing exemptions and restricting deductions. The bill narrows the definition of a “dependent child” to those under age 7. Adults with young children and teens would have to prove they work 20 hours a week or they would lose benefits after three months.
Millions of people at risk
The cruelest farm bill ever puts 11 million people at risk of losing their SNAP benefits, including over four million children.
States would suffer too. The bill would pass off some SNAP costs to states, including cash-strapped states, by making them pay at least 5% of the cost of SNAP benefits. Almost 30 states with higher SNAP “error rates” might have to pay up to 25%.
Many farm subsidy programs – including the subsidy programs whose payments would be increased by the budget bill – have “error rates” higher than SNAP error rates. But the budget bill does not ask states to pay any of the cost of farm subsidies.
At a time of rising food costs and economic uncertainty, Congress should make it easier for hungry people to eat, not harder. Lawmakers should not cut desperately needed food assistance to help finance more subsidies for the wealthiest farmers.
