The Senate passed a farm bill on Thursday that will set up a fight with the House over whether to tighten work requirements for food stamp recipients.
The Senate bill, which authorizes farm policy and programs until 2023, also includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, also known as the federal food stamp program. As passed, the Senate bill makes only minor changes to SNAP and does not mirror House language that significantly bolsters work requirements for many able-bodied adults who use food stamps.
The Senate bill won 86 votes, and only 11 senators opposed the bill.
The House approved a five-year farm bill last week with a party-line vote. Every Democrat voted against it, citing the food stamp changes.
In the Senate, however, Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and the panel’s top Democrat, Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., wrote the bill together. Democratic support is needed in the Senate to avert a filibuster, and Roberts said he left out the food stamp reforms because they could never pass the upper chamber.
Republicans and Democrats batted away a last-ditch amendment from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., to increase work requirements and another amendment from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, to require photo identification on SNAP cards.
Roberts said the work-training provisions put forward by Lee and Cruz would duplicate existing programs while the cost of requiring a photo on SNAP cards would eat up any financial savings from reduced fraud.
Roberts called the amendments “well-intentioned” and said his legislation shores up employment training and fraud protection in the SNAP program.
The legislation now moves to what could be difficult negotiations with the House and White House.
House Republican lawmakers are not interested in forfeiting the work requirement in a final bill, while President Trump this year warned Roberts at a White House meeting that he, too, is seeking changes to the SNAP program that would enforce the work requirement.
Federal law already requires many able-bodied food stamp users to work or attend training programs, but dozens of states have received waivers to avoid complying with the law.
Senate and House leaders will next have to name lawmakers to a conference committee that will be aimed at working out a final agreement both chambers can agree on. A deadline is looming.
The current farm program authorization measure expires Sept. 30, and lawmakers are eager to avoid a delay in passing new legislation because, they say, already struggling farmers need certainty about new spending on agriculture programs.
The bill reauthorizes expiring crop insurance and conservation and subsidy programs critical to the agriculture community.
