Can Democrats Stop the GOP From Taking a Chainsaw to the Farm Bill?
Republicans are gearing up to cut critical nutrition programs and increase payments to the largest farmers.
NOTE—This column, co-written by Jake Davis, was originally published in Barn Raiser as part of an ongoing series on Farm Bill issues and Farm Bill politics. Read online HERE.
The first weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term have fundamentally shaken up U.S. politics and the federal agencies. Trump has issued numerous executive orders and proclamations designed to cancel and obstruct much of the Democrats’ agenda implemented during the Biden Administration, particularly the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act and anything related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) or climate. Trump has, at least until now, employed Elon Musk (the world’s richest human) to lead the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) to carry out this war on public institutions, unilaterally implementing deep cuts to federal budgets we all depend on.
The Trump-Musk chainsaw has hit rural America hard. While farmers and farm programs have been historically off limits for Republican cuts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has not been spared. County and state offices are being shut down across the country. USDA employees who manage farm payments, conservation programs, rural development funding, forests and wildfires and science-based research projects are being terminated. Thousands of rural clean energy and conservation projects already paid for by farmers and small businesses are not being reimbursed though they have already signed valid, legal contracts with the government. Previously awarded funds for rural high-speed internet expansion and infrastructure projects are being withheld or clawed back, while Musk’s own Starlink satellite internet service is being considered as a replacement.
When combined with other Trump chaos—trade wars, tax cuts, tearing down international alliances and attacks on Medicaid, SNAP (formerly food stamps), Medicare and Social Security—Congress has made little progress on Farm Bill negotiations. Within this context, Republicans rightly sense that there is no way Democrats will join them. Any draft with deep cuts to SNAP would be unlikely to clear the 60-vote threshold in the Senate by the September 30 deadline. That would require all Republicans and 7 Democrats to support any Farm Bill legislation. This sets the stage for the demise of the traditional notion of the Farm Bill as one of the last “bipartisan” pieces of federal legislation.
House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.-15) is now floating an alternative strategy to achieve his two major Farm Bill priorities. Thompson is proposing to use the budget reconciliation process, which House and Senate Republicans are currently using to pass tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans as a work-around the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold. The two key Republican farm bill spending priorities are:
1.) Increasing farm subsidy payments that disproportionately go toward the largest grain and soybean farmers. One method to do this is by raising reference prices. These are government payments that kick in when a row crop falls below a benchmark price. A second method is by expanding crop insurance payments, which subsidize a wide range of farmers to buy private insurance to protect against yield, revenue and margin losses.
2.) Slashing SNAP benefits that help poor and working-class people pay for their groceries. Some of those cuts would come from losing SNAP benefits due to work requirements. The bulk of the cuts would come from a $1.40 per day decrease from the current $6.40 level in SNAP per person per household. That means each day a family of four dependent on SNAP would have $5.60 less to pay for food. In other words, their weekly food budget would go from $179.20 to $156.80.
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The Thompson strategy is simple enough. Use budget reconciliation to pass spending priorities by a simple majority in both chambers, increase payments to farmers in order to maintain production of mountains of corn, soybeans, cotton, wheat, rice and other row crops, and at the same time implement long-sought GOP plans to cut SNAP funding. Under this approach, the Republicans could even afford to lose a couple of Senators (such as anti-farm subsidy Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, or some mythical conservative who might come to their senses and support food aid for a single mother working three jobs to pay the bills).
But navigating the budget process to side-step farm bill landmines is not going to be easy. Look no further than the GOP’s fragile unity amid their attempts to cut taxes and pass a budget. The House passed their budget blueprint earlier in the session. It instructed the House Agriculture Committee to cut $230 billion in funds over the current 10-year budget outlook. The Senate passed their version of the budget a week ago. The Senate version includes only $1 billion in cuts for the Agriculture Committee.
On April 10 After a week of wrangling radical government-hating Freedom Caucus Republicans, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.-04) convinced nearly all Republicans to vote for the Senate Reconciliation shell. Johnson invited Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to meet with House members, promising that $1.5 trillion in cuts could be negotiated during future negotiations. In the coming months, the House and Senate will determine the final tax and spending levels by agency and program in relevant committee debates.
Thompson’s reconciliation strategy can now move forward. But Thompson will face challenges. The recently approved tax cuts are likely to cost more than $5 trillion dollars. An expected $1.5 trillion in spending cuts could make it harder to increase government payments to farmers. Raising reference prices alone is expected to cost $50 billion in additional funding. Paying for increased farm subsidies must come from somewhere. And since the 2018 Farm Bill is still in place through the end of the fiscal year, the Agriculture Committee has to provide baseline funding for conservation, crop insurance, rural development, food safety, the U.S. Forest Service and more.
All of this hurry-up-and-do-what-it-takes to achieve tax cuts and slash spending is leaving critical public debate in the lurch. Does it really make sense to increase reference prices right now, when Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is also working on a package of promised farm bailouts through the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) to help counteract the negative impacts of Trump’s trade war with China? Does it make sense to cut SNAP with skyrocketing food prices on the horizon due to trade-war inflation, not to mention a possible recession on the horizon? Most importantly, shouldn’t these issues at least be debated in the Agriculture Committee before they are rushed through the budget process?
Addressing farm price support might not be a terrible idea, especially given the outrageously broken nature of U.S. farm policy today. But doing so while cutting SNAP, conservation, rural infrastructure and U.S. Forest Service funding would be a huge mistake.
More importantly, shifting more resources to a relatively small number of row crop farmers (around 200,000 nationwide) while gutting funding to the poor and working class will further expand the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots. Combined with an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which will add even more tax benefits to the rich, wealth inequality in farm country will explode.
It is also important to note that if row crop-heavy state legislators get what they want in the reconciliation process, those lawmakers will have little incentive to invest in things like organic certification, specialty crop block grants or local agriculture marketing projects. This strategy could present a worst-case scenario for rural communities and family farmers fighting back against Big Ag’s influence on farm policy. Once Big Ag is taken care of in reconciliation process, Musk and his followers might just see the farm bill as another place to chainsaw the federal government.
Some Democrats, unfortunately, might go along with the Thompson plan, fearing Big Ag’s opposition to their reelection chances. Though they will likely vote against the reconciliation bill, they could be more than happy to support a farm bill that no longer would have to address reference prices or SNAP. Democratic Representatives Sanford Bishop (Ga.-02), Erik Sorensen (Ill.-17), and Don Davis (N.C.-01), for instance, all voted to advance the Thompson draft farm bill in the Agriculture Committee last year. Other rural Democrats, like Jared Golden (Maine-02) and Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez (Wash.-03) often join Republicans on legislation in the House.
As Democrats try to differentiate themselves from Trump and the Republicans’ disastrous leadership in the House and Senate, caving in and voting for a Republican-driven, narrower farm bill would provide Republicans with huge political cover during the midterms in 2026 and general election in 2028.
Democrats would be wise to start talking more about how dangerous the Thompson approach is. They should declare that a farm bill can’t be passed if significant sections such as SNAP are included in the reconciliation process—but we haven’t heard that yet.
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.
The greatest threat to small farms is agribiz, not regulation, markets, etc.