The Hagstrom Report

Agriculture News As It Happens

Navigation

Peterson, Cramer discuss farm and nutrition bills future

House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said this week in a North Dakota television interview that there is “a lot” in the House-passed nutrition bill to cut food stamp spending that he “can live” with even though he didn't vote for it, but he believes that “the bottom line is that it is causing us to probably not get a farm bill done.”

Peterson has said previously that he believes there should be changes to food stamps, officially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, but was unable to convince Republicans to hold a hearing on the matter before they passed a bill to cut $39 billion from food stamps over 10 years.

In an interview with Valley News Live, Peterson said the GOP decision to split the farm bill into two “is not about food stamps per se” but about the effort by the Heritage Foundation for 30 years to separate the two and to cut farm programs.

The program was aired on stations in Fargo and Grand Forks, N.D., the heart of the Red River Valley sugar beet growing area, and Peterson warned that if the nutrition and farm bill programs are separated, the sugar program would not be reauthorized.

In the same program, Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said that he is certain the farm and nutrition bills will be joined together later this week and that a conference will proceed.

Cramer also said that the conference report would cut food stamps by an amount closer to the $4 billion cut in the Senate bill, compared with the $39 billion cut in the House bill, and that he would support it.

Cramer also defended his decision to defend his vote on the nutrition bill with a biblical quote ,"If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat," by saying that it was his First Amendment right to make it.