House Republicans are eyeing May 8 for the Agriculture Committee to advance its portion of the megabill to enact President Donald Trump’s vast domestic agenda, according to two people granted anonymity to share private scheduling details.
This target date, while weeks away, is still an ambitious timelineas Republicans are trying to resolve the massive gap between the House’s instruction for the committee to accomplish $230 billion in spending cuts as compared with the Senate Agriculture Committee’s $1 billion minimum goal to offset the massive package of tax cuts, beefed up border security, energy policy and more.
The meeting will also kick off a major public fight over the future of the country’s largest anti-hunger program — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. The SNAP program helps to feed more than 40 million low-income Americans, and it’s one of the safety net programs some Republicans are wary of cutting too deeply to pay for their party-line bill.
More than a dozen Republicans in competitive districts have raised concerns that slashing significant funding from the program will mean deep cuts to current food aid benefits, beyond the new work requirements Republicans want to add for certain low-income recipients. Lawmakers are also pursuing a variety of measures to limit future updates to the program and close so-called loopholes some states have used in recent years to maximize flexibility in providing benefits.
One major issue is that senior House Republicans have assured vulnerable GOP incumbents that the party won’t actually cut $230 billion from SNAP in the final bill, given there is a swath of Senate Republicans that argues that number is too high. It’s not clear how leadership will square that promise with guarantees to fiscal hawks that the final legislation will achieve at least $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction.
Another problem Republicans are currently working through is that many members in farm states want to attach billions of dollars in new spending from farm bill programs — mainly money to boost crop reference prices for farmers — to the party-line package that is already nearing capacity with all the other provisions slated for inclusion. But it’s an acknowledgment that prospects for passing a standalone, bipartisan farm bill this year are looking increasingly bleak, and few other legislative vehicles exist for addressing outstanding items.