Page 82 - Farm Bill Series_The 7 Things You Should Know

Southerland’s SNAP work amendment was transformed in a way that appealed to
conservatives and progressives alike. With input from USDA and Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack, a provision was added to the final bill to fund a series of pilot projects around the
country to test various conservative and progressive approaches to helping SNAP beneficiaries
find work or get into better-paying jobs. The 10 projects are now under way.

Can the coalition hold?

The 2014 farm bill is turning out to save more money in nutrition spending than the CBO
originally projected at enactment. As of August 2016, the five-year cost projection for SNAP
had fallen $24 billion from what was originally projected, in part because an improving economy
is reducing demand for the program more than expected.
And that trend is expected to continue: By last November, the latest month for which data are
available, enrollment in the program had fallen to 43.2 million, down more than 3 million people
from November 2013, when the final negotiations on the 2014 farm bill were under way.

Cost estimates for SNAP are coming down, too. In January 2016, CBO estimated that SNAP
would cost taxpayers $73.9 billion for fiscal 2017. CBO has now cut that estimate to under $71
billion. By 2020, CBO estimates the cost will fall below $67 billion. Over 10 years, the reduced
SNAP spending is expected to add up to about $80 billion less than that was expected when the
2014 bill was enacted.

Leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture committees have seized on the new estimates to
argue against cuts in the next farm bill, due to be passed in 2018.

“The good news … is that the economy is improving so there is less need for the safety net
programs for families, so we’re saving tens of billions of dollars,” said Stabenow.

But Heritage and its allies in Congress still want to break up the farm-food coalition and slash
both farm and nutrition spending. The 2016 Republican Party platform, for a time, called for
breaking up the farm bill and removing SNAP from USDA. The platform accused Democrats of
holding up passage of the 2014 farm bill, a reference to the dispute with the House over the size
of the SNAP cuts. "The Democrats play politics with farm security. Much of the Democrats’
delay had nothing to do with the vital role of American agriculture,” the platform read. “It
concerned their efforts to expand welfare through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP), which now comprises more than 70 percent of all farm bill spending.”

The Heritage Foundation last year called for phasing out farm subsidies but knows that any
major changes in commodity programs or SNAP will require breaking up the political base that
supports farm bills.

“If you’re a legislator you can always kind of say, ‘Well I supported this combined farm bill,
because I support the ag programs and, yes, I just had to bite the bullet on the fact that
nothing is done with food stamps,’ and vice versa,” said Daren Bakst, the group’s research
fellow for agricultural policy. “We want legislators to be held accountable to their constituents.”

But several of Heritage's allies in Congress in the 2013 battle are no longer around. Cantor and
Southerland lost re-election bids in 2014. Stutzman lost a race for the Senate in 2016. Another
rare farm-district advocate for cutting food stamps, Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, was ousted in a
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