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<p>Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.</p>
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
House Republican leaders pick up the pieces this week after another embarrassing defeat on a farm bill, which was weighed down yet again by controversial food stamp reforms before sinking because of an intra-party feud over immigration policy.
For the second time in five years, House Republicans failed to pass a farm bill, this time because of conservative demands for action on immigration and fierce Democratic opposition to the legislation's food stamp reforms.
The EBT cards that low-income people use to buy food with their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits could become a thing of the past, replaced by smartphones.
The White House has endorsed the House farm bill ahead of a contentious floor debate, saying the legislation would provide certainty to farmers while imposing “common-sense work requirements” on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
House GOP leaders hope to pass a farm bill this week over likely unified Democratic opposition, but Republicans head into the debate divided over critical amendments on sugar policy, crop insurance and other issues.
With a farm bill floor debate looming next week, House members have filed more than half a dozen amendments attacking various aspects of the crop insurance program and others seeking to tighten rules for commodity subsidies and to roll back the sugar program.
President Donald Trump told key lawmakers Thursday that the tighter work rules for food stamp recipients in the House GOP farm bill move "in the right direction," but he stopped short of threatening to veto legislation that doesn't include them.
President Donald Trump is using a meeting with the House and Senate Agriculture committee chairmen today to emphasize that a new farm bill needs to tighten work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said.
A congressional hearing on SNAP “program integrity” provided a snapshot of the debate over the most controversial aspect of the proposed House farm bill – that in order to receive benefits, all able-bodied adults between 18 and 59 years of age work or be in an approved training program for at least 20 hours per week.
President Trump will meet with the chairmen of the House and Senate Agriculture committees on Thursday and is expected to insist that the final farm bill include tighter work requirements on food stamp recipients, according to a source familiar with the meeting plans.
