Impasse on SNAP benefits holds up farm bill

When Congress returns from their summer recess next month, they’ll have 22 days to reauthorize the farm bill before it expires on Sept. 30. But with the November election just two months away, many observers say that a deal is unlikely to be reached until later this year. But Congress must pass some sort of legislation or extension before the current law expires or face massive upheaval in agricultural commodities and dairy markets.

One of the main sticking points is food assistance. In May, Republicans on the House Committee on Agriculture passed a version of the farm bill that would effectively cut nearly $30 billion in benefits over the next decade.

On Tuesday, the Democratic Women’s Caucus sent a letter signed by 64 House lawmakers to House Speaker Mike Johnson asking him to rework the current proposal so that a 2021 update that raised monthly allowances under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, would remain.

Calling the current proposal the “largest cut to SNAP in nearly 20 years,” the letter argues that SNAP is integral to the economic security and well-being of women and children experiencing poverty.

“SNAP is an essential program that reduces rates of women’s poverty,” the letter said. “It is a critical tool for addressing poverty and hunger in our country.”

Indeed, a new issue brief released this week by the advocacy groups Food Research & Action Center and the National Women’s Law Center looked at statistics regarding the demographic breakdown of SNAP recipients and found that in 2022 women made up more than half of non-elderly adult SNAP recipients and about 1 in 3 of those recipients was a woman of color. Additionally, the analysis found that more than half of SNAP households with children were headed by a single adult.

At issue is a change to the tool used to set SNAP benefits. 

Congress in its last update of the farm bill in 2018 authorized the Agriculture Department to reexamine how it determines how much food assistance people should receive for the first time since 1975. The department began considering factors like current food prices, consumption patterns, modern dietary guidance, and the ability to buy more fish and vegetables. According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report, the guidance raised the amount of food benefits people receive by 21%.

The House bill would undo the changes the Agriculture Department made to that tool, known as the Thrifty Food Plan. One of the bill’s authors and chair of the agriculture committee, Glenn Thompson, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said in remarks made before the bill’s passage in the House that the change simply restored the tool to its original setting.

“For more than 40 years,” he said, “updates to the Thrifty Food Plan were cost-neutral. In 2021, President [Joe] Biden unilaterally, intentionally—and according to the GAO [Government Accountability Office]—unlawfully, updated the market basket to no longer be cost-neutral, resulting in a $256 billion addition to the farm bill baseline.”

Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who chairs the U.S. Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, told the Michigan Advance in late June that the change would not pass the Senate.

“The House of Representatives wants to take money out of the nutrition title to fund big farm subsidies that we’ve never done before, and I’m not going to let that happen,” Stabenow said.

The impasse comes as food prices have been a hot topic for both presidential candidates, and at a time when federal data indicates that food insecurity is on the rise. A recent analysis conducted by the Urban Institute found that SNAP benefits did not cover the cost of a modestly priced meal in 98% of U.S counties last year.

While neither candidate has said much about SNAP on the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris has made Project 2025, the right-wing playbook for the executive branch, a talking point. The 920-page document calls for drastic overhauls of federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture. It would narrow the scope of the agency to primarily focus on agricultural programs and move its food and nutritional assistance programs to the Department of Health and Human Services. It outlines policies that would substantially cut SNAP and the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC.

Both candidates, however, have signaled support for a child tax credit. Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance floated the idea earlier this month of more than doubling the amount of tax credits families can get for each child.

“I'd love to see a child tax credit that's $5,000 per child, but you, of course, have to work with Congress to see how possible and viable that is," Vance said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The 2018 farm bill was set to expire last year, but lawmakers extended it for another year. The bill is revised every five years. Leaders in both parties have indicated a temporary extension of the current law is most likely.