House Republicans are targeting USDA's major nutrition assistance programs for possible funding cuts as they look for ways to pay for other policy priorities, raising questions about how such reductions could affect Democratic support for a new farm bill.
Republicans are a long way from deciding what cuts they will pursue as part of the budget reconciliation process they plan to use to address President-elect Donald Trump’s priorities, such as including increased funding for border security and an extension of expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
But House Republicans have laid out an aggressive time table for moving the legislation. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Tuesday the plan is to have the Congress pass a fiscal 2025 budget resolution by the end of February. The resolution is a blueprint for the detailed spending and tax provisions intended to be enacted through the budget reconciliation process. Johnson said the final reconciliation bill would be ready for Donald Trump's signature by the end of May.
To that end, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, has been circulating a list of potential spending reductions totaling $5.3 trillion to $5.5 trillion that includes $296 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
By comparison, the farm bill advanced by the House Agriculture Committee last spring would have cut a net $20 billion from the nutrition title by putting restrictions on future updates of the Thrifty Food Plan that would save an estimated $29.4 billion, one-tenth the SNAP cut suggested by Arrington. TFP is an economic model of household food costs used to set SNAP benefits.
The House Ag cut would have slowed growth of SNAP but wouldn’t have cut existing benefits.
Theoretically, Republicans could include a number of farm bill provisions in a reconciliation package beyond SNAP cuts, including cuts in Inflation Reduction Act conservation funding or increased spending for commodity programs. Rules for budget reconciliation broadly allow for changes in law that increase or reduce spending and revenues.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., told Agri-Pulse that he didn’t want IRA funding in reconciliation and didn’t expect commodity programs to be part of it.
House Ag Chair Glenn Thompson
“We're going to need some pay-fors for the farm bill,” Thompson said, suggesting that the IRA funding could pay for other farm bill priorities. About $14 billion in IRA funding for four major conservation programs has not been spent yet. “We need to hang on to some of those opportunities for the actual farm bill,” he said.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Agri-Pulse that Republicans also might try to tighten work requirements but warned that “they’ll have a hard time getting a farm bill if they go too far.”
Angela Rachidi, senior fellow and Rowe Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said Arrington's list likely refers to narrowing the criteria for states to waive the work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents, or ABAWDS. The first Trump administration proposed this in 2019 but it wasn’t implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the later change in administration.
Vilsack suggested that Republicans could run afoul of rules that govern the budget reconciliation process that restrict the kinds of policy changes that reconciliation measures can include.
Passing farm bills has long relied on holding together a delicate rural-urban coalition to ensure enough votes for passage of the legislation in the House and Senate. The 2018 farm bill stalled for months over House GOP cuts to SNAP that were ultimately dropped in the final negotiations.
The new ranking Democrat on the House Ag Committee, Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., issued a statement denouncing the cuts Arrington circulated. “They plan to cut the SNAP program, which not only means taking food from hungry children, but also less demand for the food our farmers produce, manufacturers package, truckers haul and grocery store clerks stock on the shelves,” she said.
House Ag ranking member Angie Craig Craig said in an interview that any cuts to the Thrifty Food Plan would be “devastating” to the farm bill process. “That means you would be taking away money that could be invested in farmers and put it in the tax bill to make sure that the ultra-wealthy keep their tax breaks,” she said.
Last year, four committee Democrats voted for the bill Thompson moved through the committee, despite the TFP cut, but the bill was never put on the House floor.
Other House Agriculture Committee Democrats expressed similar concern.
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said he couldn’t imagine a farm bill passing with any cuts to SNAP included in reconciliation.
“They not only want to restrict SNAP, they want to lower the benefit … at a time when inflation is still an issue,” McGovern said. “So no, I think if they screw around with the nutrition bill, they're on their own.”
Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., said with such a narrow majority in the House, Republicans should understand that reforms to SNAP or the TFP would be a “no-go” for Democrats, and a “dealbreaker” for bipartisan consensus around reconciliation.
“As we continue to negotiate hopefully a bipartisan farm bill, let's keep it all together as it has been and have that negotiation in the House Agriculture Committee,” Budzinski said.
Congress effectively has until the end of the year to pass a new farm bill or else need to move another extension of the 2018 law. Congress has passed two successive one-year extensions.
One of the big issues House Republicans still must determine is whether they will try to pay for all or part of the TCJA extensions or new tax cuts with spending reductions. Some hard line conservatives have demanded such spending cuts. Senate Republicans, led by Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, have said that reauthorizing current tax rates and deductions shouldn't have to be paid for.
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