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<p>Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.</p>
Tuesday, April 01, 2025
The GOP-controlled House overwhelmingly passed bipartisan legislation Wednesday evening to avert a first-ever government default, impose caps on federal spending and make the first major changes to SNAP work requirements in decades.
Leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees say the debt limit agreement should remove SNAP work requirements as a potential sticking point in the upcoming farm bill debate, but also said the deal takes away some potential funding.
House Republicans who have been struggling unsuccessfully for years to tighten work rules for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program scored a win in the debt limit negotiations that would expand the requirements to people in their early 50s, but President Joe Biden also won key new exemptions for veterans and people who are homeless.
House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Kay Granger on Tuesday postponed scheduled action on the fiscal 2024 Agriculture spending bill and three other measures, citing the ongoing negotiations with the White House over the debt ceiling limit.
The chief economist for Senate Ag Committee’s Republican staff says the Congressional Budget Office’s new farm program forecast does nothing to help lower the cost of making improvements in commodity programs that ag groups are seeking.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson is leaving the door open to trying to tighten SNAP eligibility rules in the farm bill if Republicans fail to get a debt-limit deal with President Joe Biden to expand the program’s work requirements.
House Republicans will try to pass a plan to raise the debt ceiling that would cut domestic spending, expand SNAP work requirements and gut the biofuel and clean energy tax incentives that are the centerpiece of President Joe Biden climate policy.
House Republicans are targeting SNAP work requirements as they prepare legislation to raise the debt ceiling, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a speech Monday at the New York Stock Exchange.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack sparred with House Republicans over the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in what could be an opening skirmish in a battle over potential program cuts as Congress considers a new farm bill.
