House committee approves farm bill

WASHINGTON  — The House Agriculture Committee has approved a five-year farm and nutrition bill that gives farmers new ways to protect themselves from bad weather and poor prices and slices about 2 percent off the $80 billion the government spends every year on food stamps.

The 35-11 committee vote comes three weeks after the Senate passed its version of the half-trillion-dollar bill and shifts the focus to the full House as Congress seeks to come up with a consensus bill before the current farm bill expires at the end of September.

House Republican leaders have shown little enthusiasm for taking up legislation that faces opposition from conservatives who say it is too expensive. Democrats, meanwhile, don't like the cuts in food stamps.

The bill costs nearly $100 billion a year, with 80 percent devoted to food stamps — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The House legislation would save $3.5 billion a year from current spending levels, with $1.6 billion coming from tightening rules for food stamp beneficiaries. Savings in the Senate bill are $2.3 billion a year, of which $400 million comes from the food stamp program.

While the House legislation, like its Senate counterpart, envisions major changes in farm safety nets, the most heated debate during the 15-hour committee meeting was on food stamps. Amendments by both Democrats to erase reductions and Republicans to increase those cuts failed.

The House bill differs from its Senate counterpart by preserving a price support program that pays farmers when prices fall below certain levels. The target price system is favored by Southern rice and peanut farmers, who objected to the elimination of price supports in the Senate bill.

The House measure gives farmers a choice between the price support program and a taxpayer-paid revenue protection program included in the Senate bill that compensates farmers for modest revenue losses before subsidized crop insurance kicks in. The need for a strong safety net program became more pronounced as heat and drought threatened to seriously damage the Midwestern corn crop.

Craig Regelbrugge, the vice president of government relations for the American Nursery & Landscape Association, said the programs of most direct and beneficial impact on the industry survived intact. Plant pest and disease prevention, national clean plant network, specialty crop block grants, and research provisions in the bill attracted little controversy and few amendments.