Farm Bill Defeated By House, Reps Divided Over Food Stamp Cuts

The House farm bill was surprisingly defeated on Thursday mostly due to the bill's proposal to cut the food-stamp program by $20.5 billion.

The House voted against the five-year farm bill in a shocking 195-234 vote, with 62 Republicans joining a majority of Democrats who voted against the bill, reports Yahoo! News.

In previous terms, the farm bill was passed easily, however conservatives expressed more desire to prevent the growth of big government through spending cuts, rather than grant crop insurance subsidies to rich farmers.

The House bill proposed to cut projected spending in farm and nutrition programs by nearly $40 billion over the next 10 years. The plan also included cutting $20.5 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as the food stamp program, the New York Times reports.

Like the Senate bill, the House bill would have eliminated the $5 billion-a-year subsidies paid to farmers and landowners whether they plant crops or not. The billions of dollars saved would be directed into the $9 billion crop insurance program, and new subsidies would be created for peanut, cotton and rice farmers.

The nearly $75-billion food stamp program was the focus of most of the farm bill debate. Democrats believed that cuts to the program were too steep and introduced an amendment that would scale them back by cutting funds for crop insurance. However, legislatures rejected the amendment. 

Lawmakers were able to pass two amendments, one to allow states to drug test food stamp applicants, and the other to require food stamp recipients to meet federal welfare work requirements. Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern objected to the measure, reasoning that the amendments would cause two million people to lose benefits. "The price of a farm bill should not be making more people hungry in America or criminalizing people who need help," he said.

But some Republicans argued that the cuts and other changes to the program were made to prevent fraud.

"We don't want people gaming the system," said Rep. Steve King, adding that heheard of cases in which tattoo parlors advertise that they take food stamps as payment, and another of a person bailing himself out of jail using his food stamps benefits card. Agriculture Department officials say those cases are unlikely because stores that take the benefits have to be approved by the agency.