Bill not just about farmers

Published 10:51 am Wednesday, February 5, 2014

WASHINGTON — 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.

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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.