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<p>Balanced Reporting. Trusted Insights.</p>
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
With a government shutdown looming on Sunday, the House plowed ahead with debating additional cuts to USDA and farm bill programs as part of a fiscal 2024 spending bill that has no chance of becoming law.
The House is set to debate the annual funding bill for USDA and FDA this week, even as a partial shutdown looms at the end of this week unless House Republicans and Democratic-controlled Senate can agree on a stopgap spending bill.
House Republican leaders have been struggling to get the votes to move a partisan fiscal 2024 funding bill for USDA and FDA ahead of the long summer recess, raising fresh doubts about how soon lawmakers can start working on the farm bill this fall.
A bill that will suspend the debt ceiling, impose caps on federal spending and make major changes to work requirements under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program got final approval from the Senate late Thursday, clearing the measure for President Joe Biden's signature in time to avert a government default.
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 Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Joe Biden reached an agreement in principle on raising the debt ceiling that would expand work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
The House Appropriations Committee this week will takes up an unusually partisan funding bill for the USDA and FDA that highlights some major cuts to spending Republicans would like to make, even as President Joe Biden even as debt ceiling negotiations lurch toward a June deadline.
House Republican leaders on Wednesday narrowly won approval for their bill to raise the debt ceiling while also slashing federal spending and expanding SNAP work requirements.
