House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson indicated Monday he wants to limit cuts to SNAP that Republicans will try to make through the budget reconciliation process, but the panel’s new top Democrat, Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig, questioned whether he can hold the line and warned that a deep reduction could ultimately doom a new farm bill.
Craig appeared on a panel with Thompson, R-Pa., at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s annual meeting in San Antonio, Texas. Agri-Pulse Publisher Sara Wyant moderated the discussion.
Craig also said the farm bill the committee moved last year was skewed toward southern farmers and the commodity title would have to be adjusted to get her support.
Thompson said he was opposed to rolling back the increase in SNAP benefits that resulted in 2021 from the Biden administration’s update of the Thrifty Food Plan, a model of eating patterns that is used to set SNAP benefits.
“I'm not looking to see any cuts to the SNAP program. … Now that said, I think within the nutrition title, there may be there's opportunities in terms of program integrity. We've all heard about some of the fraud and abuse that happens in states. States have no skin in the game. At this point, there's no incentive for states to do the extra effort, to spend extra money, to making sure that they're protecting the SNAP benefits for the beneficiaries,” Thompson said.
But Craig expressed doubt that Thompson could control what happens to SNAP among the GOP conference. She noted that the chairman of the House Budget Committee had floated a list of possible spending reduction that included nearly $300 billion in cuts to SNAP. “This is not GT, but the powers that be on the Republican side” that are considering such cuts, Craig said.
Republicans are meeting in Doral, Florida, this week to debate their reconciliation plans.
She warned, as she has before, that such cuts could make it difficult to ultimately move a farm bill that would likely need some Democratic support to pass the House. "I hope GT has some luck in Florida to talk folks out of this,” she said.
During the panel and later to reporters, Craig said the reference prices included in the farm bill that the committee approved last year were skewed to benefit southern commodities to the detriment of farmers elsewhere.
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“I do think we have got to come back to look at something on reference prices, the equity of the distribution of some of that across the country,” she told reporters. “I know Midwest producers felt a little like they didn't get much out of the farm bill. … I'm going to be learning a lot about the rest of the country, but I'm sure going to be fighting for equity, equitable distribution, of the farm bill to producers across our nation.”
On other issues, Thompson said that Congress should have a role in deciding whether and how farmers are compensated for losses due to a trade war. Agriculture Secretary-nominee Brooke Rollins told the Senate Ag Committee at her confirmation hearing last week that discussions about a new round of trade aid were already underway within the incoming administration. She said former Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue had advised her of modifications to the Market Facilitation Program he ran during the first Trump administration.
“I'll work with the future secretary on that,” Thompson said. “I actually believe, and I don't care who the secretary is, that if there is a significant need that goes above and beyond what the scope of the Commodity Credit Corporation should be used for, they need to bring that need to the committee, and we need to do our job of convincing the rest of Congress to codify, to legislate [a new MFP program].”
The committee’s farm bill would have stripped USDA of the spending authority it needs to make such payments through the CCC.
Thompson also said he thinks that Trump is going to be more measured in his use of tariffs than he was previously, citing the spat that erupted Sunday with Colombia, which agreed to resume accepting deportation flights after Trump threatened to impose stiff tariffs on Colombian exports.
“He's learned how to more effectively use tariffs as a tool, not a policy,” Thompson said.
Craig isn’t so sure Trump has changed his approach. “I love GT’s optimism. I do. I am a little less optimistic that this is just bluster. I do think that nobody wins in a trade war, and especially the retaliatory tariffs that are going to fall on the ag community and to the nation's consumers, my constituents, when prices go up.”
During the panel discussion, Craig said she was open to including a provision in the farm bill that would bar states such as California from imposing regulations on how foods are produced outside their borders. But she said such provisions should be limited in scope to avoid nullifying other state laws.
Thompson said the committee farm bill “absolutely avoided that because we don't want to interfere with what Minnesota does internally.”
Craig also made the case for allowing the sale of E15 year-round. A provision that would have done that was stripped at the last minute from a year-end legislative package in December.
“We just need to get it done. … Liquid fuels are going to be part of the mix for a very long time, and so why not start to transition a little more toward E15 or higher blends in order to reduce carbon emissions in our country?”
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