This week, the U.S. House of Representatives, in a 251-166 vote, approved a nearly $100-billion-a-year farm bill. I know some of the farm provisions in the bill are extremely important to our farmers, but I voted against this legislation because it failed to reform the food stamp program and included farm provisions that harm the poultry industry on the Eastern Shore. The bill will spend about $950 billion over 10 years, with $756 billion going toward food stamps.
The House previously passed two separate pieces of legislation—a freestanding farm bill and a separate food stamp bill. I supported that House farm bill, which included protection for the poultry industry, and I supported substantial reforms the House wanted to make to the food stamp program, including a work-training requirement for able-bodied adult recipients. The legislation passed this week combined those two bills, but practically eliminated all of the important reforms to the food stamp program. The bill reduced only $8 billion from the food stamp program, a far cry from the $39 billion reduction in spending from reforms like the work requirement that the House had proposed.
I support efforts to help our farmers, and I support safety-net nutrition programs for the hungry in America. Sadly, the combined farm and food stamp bill failed on both these measures. The farm component of the bill will harm the poultry industry so important to the economy on the Eastern Shore—an economy that is barely treading water in this ongoing recession. Some poultry farmers are concerned about the retaliation that will follow country-of-origin labeling requirements. For example, Canada has already threatened to retaliate against U.S. poultry imports, potentially denying American chicken farmers the ability to sell their product in that country.
The food stamp program, which has grown 240 percent in only a dozen years, needed reforms that included work or work-training requirements for able-bodied adult recipients—but the final bill stripped out those requirements from the earlier House version. That’s why I couldn’t support this week’s bill, even though I voted for both the separate farm bill and the separate food stamp bill when they came to the House last summer and fall.
Sincerely,
Andy Harris, M.D.
MEMBER OF CONGRESS
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