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| By Meredith Lee Hill |
Presented by Organization for Competitive Markets |
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| — The House and Senate are set for a bruising clash over SNAP in the upcoming farm bill, following controversial new measures in the debt ceiling law that Congress passed last week. The House Agriculture Committee will hold its first nutrition farm bill hearing of this Congress on Wednesday. — House Ag is also turning to crypto and digital assets this week, as lawmakers recently unveiled an early draft of a new regulatory bill. — MA caught up with House Ag member Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.) for a look at his farm bill priorities. HAPPY MONDAY, June 5. Welcome to Morning Ag. I’m your host Meredith Lee Hill. Send tips to meredithlee@politico.com and @meredithllee, and follow us at @Morning_Ag.
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| A message from Organization for Competitive Markets: Recall Congress rejecting Steve King's extreme Farm Bill amendment to nullify thousands of state ag laws? Despite King's departure. Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-IA, and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-KS, are pushing a Trojan horse - called the EATS Act - to advance King's divisive idea. It threatens the Farm Bill’s passage by breeding chaos among key stakeholders. Urge Congress to rebuke this attack on states’ rights, and safeguard our farming heritage. Say NO to the King/Hinson /Marshall EATS Act. |
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IT BEGINS: On Wednesday, the full House Agriculture committee is holding its first hearing on nutrition programs — following the contentious fight over SNAP in the debt talks. As we’ve reported, Democrats have complained that the committee has yet to hold any hearings on the matter — while they argue some Republicans spread false claims about SNAP and program recipients during the debt talks. The hearing will set up a major fight between Republicans and Democrats in the House during the upcoming farm bill reauthorization later this summer. UPCOMING FIGHT: But the Senate and House are on an even bigger collision course over the topic of SNAP.
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 Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) last week told MA that, from her perspective, Congress is “done” with any discussion around SNAP changes. | Francis Chung/POLITICO |
Senate Agriculture Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) last week told MA that, from her perspective, Congress is “done” with any discussion around SNAP changes. “What's clear to me is once this is done we are not revisiting it in the farm bill. This is it,” Stabenow said in an interview.
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 Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in his speech last Wednesday night celebrating the House’s passage of the debt bill, appeared to gear his caucus up for a bruising farm bill battle over SNAP. | Francis Chung/POLITICO |
But Speaker Kevin McCarthy, in his speech last Wednesday night celebrating the House’s passage of the debt bill, appeared to gear his caucus up for a bruising farm bill battle over SNAP. “Let’s get the rest of the work requirements,” McCarthy said. Remember: Some House Republican hardliners are even more eager to push stricter SNAP work requirements in the farm bill after they felt the debt agreement between Biden and McCarthy “watered down” what was in their original bill. A wide swath of House Republicans were also not pleased that CBO projected all the SNAP work requirement changes in the debt bill will actually increase spending and enrollment for the program — which Republicans have been trying to cut. McCarthy had originally pitched the new work requirements as a way to keep the U.S. from borrowing more money from China to pay able-bodied people not to work, but the CBO projection directly undermines that claim. Senior Republicans dispute that projection. But regardless, three House GOP hardliners told MA the CBO analysis just proved how “embarrassing” the Republican-led negotiations were. SNAP CHANGES: Republicans secured the biggest reforms to work requirements for federal food aid in decades as part of the debt negotiations. But they also agreed to explicitly reduce barriers to access for people experiencing homelessness, veterans and recent foster youth for the first time — a concession to Biden’s team that the Congressional Budget Office projected would actually increase overall spending on the very program Republicans were trying to cut. USDA deputy undersecretary Stacy Dean warned on a briefing call Friday that some hurdles to implementing the new provisions remain, noting the explicit exemptions for veterans and other vulnerable populations still “have to be offered and secured by states" in many cases. Timeline: The final deal phases in the expanded SNAP work requirements and sunsets them by 2030. The debt bill also includes new restrictions on emergency cash aid known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which will hit low-income families with children.
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BILL TIME?: House Ag members, along with Financial Services Committee members, have been working to draft legislation to better outline and regulate the market structure of crypto and digital assets, especially how they interact with farm-related commodity markets and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under House Ag jurisdiction. House Ag Chair G.T. Thompson told MA he’s “anxious” for a markup on the impending bill. He predicted that it would happen in June or July. Republicans on both panels rolled out a discussion draft of their market structure bill Friday. POLITICO’s Eleanor Mueller and Declan Harty have a deeper look at what the bill would do. Hearing: Thompson’s full committee is holding a hearing on crypto and digital assets Tuesday at 10 a.m.
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| A message from Organization for Competitive Markets:   |
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Rep. Eric Sorensen (D. Ill.) told MA he’s assembled an agriculture roundtable to hear about economic and climate pressures on farmers | Drew Angerer/Getty Images |
Rep. Eric Sorensen, a first-term Democrat from Illinois and former meteorologist, told MA he’s assembled an agriculture roundtable to hear about economic and climate pressures on farmers ahead of the upcoming farm bill reauthorization. Sorensen sits on two House Ag subcommittees: The general farm commodities, risk management and credit subcommittee and the conservation, research and biotechnology subcommittee. He’s also a member of the New Democrat Coalition of roughly 100 members that early on threw its weight behind the debt deal. Sorensen voted for the legislation last week. Crop insurance: “A lot of the farmers I talk with, they don't want to go through the federal disaster assistance, they want robust crop insurance,” Sorensen said, noting it’s one of his top farm bill priorities. More extreme weather is adding pressure for lawmakers to boost crop insurance in the upcoming farm bill, Sorensen said, rather than Congress spending billions in ad hoc assistance. Sorensen said he also wants to help farmers find more “ways to supplement a bad year, with solar [and] renewable” energy generation on their land, like wind turbines. Nutrition: As House Republicans successfully pushed to expand work requirements for key safety net programs in the debt bill, Sorensen noted there “are already work requirements in place” for food assistance. “This isn't the place where we're going to be able to find a cut, because there isn't any excess spending here with respect to food security,” Sorensen added. The next generation: Sorensen said he’s committed to fighting for the next generation of family farmers because of the grim statistics about high suicide rate among farmers. “Too many family farmers are quitting their life and so my job in Congress is going to be able to fight for them,” Sorensen said.
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— Get a deeper look at how Republicans are disputing the CBO projection that the debt deal will actually increase SNAP spending and enrollment. — Senate Ag will hold a subcommittee hearing Wednesday at 10 a.m. on specialty crops in the farm bill. — Biden has nominated Jeffrey Prescott to replace Cindy McCain as the U.S. Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. — 800 million of trees have been felled in the last six years in the Amazon, largely for beef production, according to a new investigation from The Guardian, Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), Repórter Brasil and Forbidden Stories. THAT’S ALL FOR MA! Drop us a line: gdowns@politico.com, meredithlee@politico.com, marciabrown@politico.com, mmartinez@politico.com, abehsudi@politico.com and ecadei@politico.com.
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| A message from Organization for Competitive Markets: Remember Congress dismissing former Rep. Steve King's notorious Farm Bill amendment, aimed at invalidating a multitude of state laws and regulations across America and in your home state?
Despite King's exit from Congress, Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-IA and Sen. Roger Marshall, R-KS, under the guise of the EATS Act, are scheming to revive King's divisive idea. This move risks inciting chaos among key agricultural stakeholders and imperiling the passage of any Farm Bill, as history has shown. It’s critical Congress rejects the EATS Act’s inclusion in the Farm bill. Please oppose the Steve King/Hinson/Marshall EATS Act, which will torpedo the Farm Bill. |
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