Stabenow explains details of farm bill on C-SPAN
February 03, 2014 | 02:59 PM
In an interview on C-SPAN Newsmakers broadcast Sunday, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said she expects the farm bill conference report to pass the Senate this week because the “fundamentals” are very close to the original Senate bill.
“What I am very proud of is that this really is a farm bill for the future, not the past,” Stabenow said in the interview conducted by Alan Bjerga of Bloomberg and Ed Keefe of The Washington Post.
“You know, for decades we’ve been talking about the fact we shouldn’t be giving farm subsidies to farmers when prices are high, you shouldn’t just get a check just because you plant something,” she said. “In this farm bill, that’s gone. Instead farmers are going to get a bill for crop insurance instead of a check, or they are going to get help only when there’s a weather disaster or when there’s a market disaster.”
On the changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program better known as SNAP or food stamps, Stabenow said that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has committed USDA to “a very aggressive outreach program” to make sure that all renters who qualify for increased benefits receive them.
A provision requires states to have made at least a $20 payment to beneficiaries in Low-Income Heating and Energy Assistance Program in order to trigger a higher SNAP benefit.
Acknowledging that 800,000 to 900,000 households could see a drop in their benefits, Stabenow said that would be the “maximum” that would see the benefit drop.
“Now I know that there are folks that are renters that don’t have readily available the ability to show that they have utilities built into their rent,” she said.
“The Secretary of Agriculture has made a commitment to a very aggressive outreach program, which we will do, to help people be able to show and verify that they have their heat as part of their rent.”
“But I can’t, with a straight face, look at anybody and say it’s OK for somebody to get a utility credit if they don’t have a utility bill, so that’s the change we made.”
She also noted that under the new dairy program, “one of the great things that we did is say the USDA can now buy milk for programs for children, for the needy, for food banks and so on. We have increased the money to food banks and we have said if you buy fresh fruits and vegetables with your food assistance money, we’ll give you double the value of the food assistance, because we want people to be able to buy healthy food for their families.”
Stabenow also defended the decision to change the payment limitations from the earlier House and Senate versions and put in place an overall cap of $125,000 per farmer and leave out caps on individual programs, and to remove a provision in the House bill that would have required members of Congress to reveal any farm subsidies they get.
She said the decision to remove the provision on congressional disclosure came because members already report their sources of income on financial disclosure forms. Stabenow added that financial disclosure “isn’t traditionally a part of the farm bill. It’s certainly something I would support doing more on, but it was not something that was done in this bill.”
On the decision not to make any changes to country-of-origin labeling for red meat, Stabenow noted that the opponents of it are appealing the new U.S. proposal for detailed labeling.
“There’s a 50-50 chance that they will win,” she said. “If the U.S. loses, that label will be gone or changed anyway. And if [the U.S. wins] then we will have to address it."
The new farm bill reduces commodity title spending by 31 percent “as opposed to 1 percent in nutrition,” while the conservation title spends more than the commodity title for the first time, she noted.
“I’m not saying this is perfect,” Stabenow noted, adding that she hopes there will be another farm bill in 2018 because “because we all have a stake in having affordable, safe food, and we in America are blessed that there’s a group of people that are willing to get up every day and fight the weather.”
