Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) risks leaving the Senate at the end of the year with a big question mark hanging over her almost three-decade career in Washington.
As the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, she is waging her third and final fight over the farm bill, which sets agriculture and nutrition policy every five years, yet she may retire with the latest package stuck in limbo.
The central holdup is hardly new. Republicans, who control the House, have sought to restrict the growth of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, after the farm bill ballooned to $1.5 trillion in recent years. The entitlement makes up 82% of the total bill.
Meanwhile, fights over “climate-smart” conservation funding and price supports for certain commodities have also delayed the legislation.
WHY THE FARM BILL MATTERS FOR STATES THAT DON’T RELY ON FARMERS
Stabenow said she would dedicate herself to passing the current farm bill in announcing her retirement from the Senate a year ago. But the impasse means she may not be at the negotiating table when the full, five-year reauthorization is finally approved.
Congress has already punted on the bill once, passing a one-year extension last fall, and could do so again later this year.
Stabenow, 74, has broken a series of barriers in her career, including her election as the first woman to represent Michigan in the Senate. She will end her tenure as the No. 3 Democrat in leadership in her capacity as chairwoman of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee.
But the farm bill is one of her biggest policy legacies.
Both parties say it is still possible to get a deal done before the Sept. 30 deadline. Each chamber has put out competing proposals, while the House passed its version out of committee on Thursday in a largely party-line vote.
Yet Stabenow’s retirement from the Senate is forcing her to decide whether to get the best deal she can in divided government or risk a weaker hand for Democrats in the next Congress.
The decision is not a hard one for Stabenow, she suggested in an interview. She would rather extend the current farm bill, which she helped negotiate in 2018, once again than accept something she views as an unacceptable product.
“I have an incentive to get a good bill done. I do not have an incentive to do a bad bill,” Stabenow told the Washington Examiner.
However, there is a distinct possibility that ranking member John Boozman (R-AK) will soon hold the committee gavel, given the favorable Senate map for Republicans in November. Meanwhile, control of the lower chamber and White House is viewed as a coin toss.
SNAP benefits friction
The dynamics underlying the farm bill are complex and largely bipartisan. The legislation reflects a careful balancing of interests, from farmers to environmentalists to food advocates.
Food stamps, though, have been a constant source of friction in talks. The bill exploded in size, to the tune of $256 billion, after the Biden administration raised the grocery cost estimate used to set SNAP benefits, and now Republicans want to force future changes to be cost neutral.
Democrats call that a cut to the program, citing the almost $30 billion reduction estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, while Republicans note the program, adjusted for inflation each year, would continue to grow.
“We’re not talking about taking away anything from anybody. It’s just slowing down the growth,” said Boozman. “I think by any measure certainly nutrition has been well taken care of.”
Stabenow predicted Republicans would have to abandon the changes if they want to get a farm bill done, citing past fights over SNAP. In debt ceiling negotiations last year, House Republicans won stricter work requirements but have been unsuccessful at other times.
“Never works,” Stabenow said. “They always come back and realize you have to have the whole farm bill coalition.”
Nonetheless, Republicans celebrated committee passage of the House bill on Thursday night as a sign of momentum. Four Democrats crossed over to vote in favor despite Stabenow and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) leaning on panel Democrats to oppose it earlier this month.
House makes progress
The vote marked a step forward more than a breakthrough. The bill faces a bigger hurdle on the House floor due to pockets of Republican opposition, while any eventual compromise still needs to pass the Democratic-led Senate.
“I don’t know where the votes come from, on the Right or the Left,” Stabenow said.
Over in the Senate, Stabenow released a public summary of her committee’s farm bill at the beginning of the month, proposing, among other things, an expansion in food stamp eligibility.
But the baby steps — her committee is waiting for Senate Republicans’ blueprint to engage in negotiations — mean there is little time on the Senate calendar to get a bill done.
Boozman, who is aligned with House Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-PA), told the Washington Examiner there is a “good chance” a compromise with the Democrats can still come together.
Under one scenario, the two chambers agree to a short extension to the end of the year and then iron out a deal in the lame-duck session, the time between the November election and the start of the new Congress.
“I don’t think it gets any easier next year,” Boozman said.
For the time being, the two sides seem as dug-in as ever. On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack accused House Republicans of attempting to “rob Peter to pay Paul” with their bill.
Democrats have criticized Thompson’s decision to restrict SNAP while pursuing a $47 billion increase in price supports for commodities like peanuts and rice.
Boozman called Vilsack’s comments “unprecedented” and unhelpful. “Out of the $1.5 trillion that we’re talking about, we need more farm in the farm bill,” he said.
‘Areas of concern’
Meanwhile, negotiators are at loggerheads over how to treat billions in Inflation Reduction Act dollars that Democrats want rolled into the farm bill. Republicans are open to doing so but want the money, currently slated for climate initiatives, to be available for conservation programs more broadly.
Stabenow said there are wide areas for agreement on the farm bill. She cited provisions on crop insurance that she said could be attractive to Republicans. But Stabenow sounded less bullish than Boozman on the chances of a breakthrough.
“I don’t think we’re close on the areas that, unfortunately, have really been the areas of concern,” Stabenow said. “I’m doing everything I can to try to get people at the table and to be realistic about what we can do.”
Asked about Stabenow’s retirement, Boozman praised her as a “great partner” and said both sides were working through their disagreements on SNAP in “good faith.”
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“We’ve done some really difficult things in the nutrition space,” he said.
The conventional wisdom is that Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) will succeed Stabenow as the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee in the new Congress.
