The Associated Press
The sweeping farm bill that Congress sent to President Obama on Tuesday has something for almost everyone, from the nation’s 47 million food stamp recipients to Southern peanut growers, Midwest corn farmers and the maple syrup industry in the Northeast.
After years of setbacks, the Senate on Tuesday sent the nearly $100 billion-a-year measure to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it. The Senate passed the bill 68-32 after House passage last week.
Wisconsin’s senators split on the bill, with Democrat Tammy Baldwin supporting it and Republican Ron Johnson opposing it.
“It should be called the Food Stamp Act of 2014, because food stamp spending … makes up 79 percent, or $756 billion, of its $956 billion 10-year total spending,” Johnson said in a news release. “Food stamps and farm policy should be addressed in separate bills. As a result, I could not support this bill.”
In her statement, Baldwin noted, “This compromise isn’t perfect, but it is bipartisan legislation that makes important investments in our rural communities and will help ensure that our agriculture sector continues to fuel our state’s economy.”
The bill provides a financial cushion for farmers who face unpredictable weather and market conditions. It also provides subsidies for rural communities and environmentally sensitive land. The bulk of its cost is for the food stamp program, which aids 1 in 7 Americans. The bill would cut food stamps by $800 million a year, or around 1 percent.
House Republicans had hoped to reduce the bill’s costs even further, pointing to a booming agriculture sector in recent years and arguing that the now $80 billion-a-year food stamp program has spiraled out of control.
Those partisan disagreements stalled the bill for more than two years, but conservatives were eventually outnumbered as the Democratic Senate, the White House and a still-powerful bipartisan coalition of farm-state lawmakers pushed to get the bill done.
The White House has been mostly quiet as Congress worked out its differences on the bill. In a statement after the vote, Obama said the bill would reduce the deficit “without gutting the vital assistance programs millions of hardworking Americans count on to help put food on the table for their families.”
He said the farm bill isn’t perfect, “but on the whole, it will make a positive difference not only for the rural economies that grow America’s food, but for our nation.”
Obama praised the bill for getting rid of controversial subsidies known as direct payments, which are paid to farmers whether they farm or not. Most of that program’s $4.5 billion annual cost was redirected into new, more politically defensible subsidies that would kick in when a farmer has losses.
To gather votes for the bill, Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and her House counterpart, Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla., included a major boost for crop insurance popular in the Midwest, higher subsidies for Southern rice and peanut farmers, and land payments for Western states. The bill also sets policy for hundreds of smaller programs, subsidies, loans and grants — from research on wool to loans for honey producers to protections for the catfish industry. The bill would provide assistance for rural Internet services and boost organic agriculture.