Social Policy affected by the Political Process
H.R. 2642 also known as the Federal Agriculture and Risk Management (FARRM) Act is a bill that is passed every 5 years consisting of nutritional programs, conservation, research, trade, tax provisions, commodity programs, rural development, energy, crop insurance and disaster. The bill basically affects anyone who eats, sells, buys or grows food according to the Farm Aid. Although the bill was originally for farmers during the Great Depression, currently the bill leans towards nutritional programs. The nutritional programs consist of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), other emergency food assistance programs, and initiatives that promote local foods, like the Senior Farmers’ Market Promotion Program (Farm Aid, 2013).
The current Agriculture Act of 2014 (H.R. 2642) was originally introduced on July 10, 2013 to the House of Representatives by Republican Frank Lucas. Speaker of the House John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor were both huge supporters of the bill who help influence other Republicans to support the bill as well. Through much delay, the Agriculture Act of 2014 wasn’t passed until January 29, 2014 after the Republicans who favored the bill led the House vote 251- 166, against the Democrats who opposed the bill split almost evenly 89-103 (Berstein, 2014).
The Quirky Gourmet and other websites list just a few pros and cons to this new 2014 FARRM bill.
Pros:
- There’s a $1 billion a year increase in spending on food stamps and other nutritional programs.
- There’s a $3.8 billion disaster relief program for farmers.
- There’s a bit of a reduction in the amount of subsidies that large-scale farms can receive on their acreage.
- There’s a small reduction in tax credits for ethanol processors.
- Save taxpayers $23 billion in mandatory federal spending
Cons:
- The bill is still geared towards subsidizing the production of a limited number of commodities, rather than building a diversified agricultural system.
- The bill still includes tax credits for ethanol, even if they’ve been reduced a bit. The recent move towards using corn for fuel rather than for food is one of the reasons behind recent food shortages.
- $8.7 billion over 10 years of food stamps will be cut resulting in $850, 000 families losing about $90 a month
- Feeding America said that the cuts to food stamps would result in 34 lost meals per month for the affected households.
People who are working are working at minimum wage, desperately trying to find jobs, and already receive inadequate food stamps. Can you feed a family of 4 on $135 a month? Granted some families get a little more and at the same time, there are people getting less. Now, in my personal opinion, I can agree that this was a loss for the Democrats, and I try to be optimistic and look at all angles of a situation before I pass judgment. However, I never gave this bill a chance, due me knowing that I will never come to terms with taking meals from families who need it the most. Although I am curious if others feel this was a bill for the better, for the worse, or if our society can work with it.
Montinique – This is a really good post and you used references well. Just a couple of points to remember. First, the primary purpose of the Farm Bill is aid to farmers. SNAP or food stamps were added to the farm bill and this article gives you an idea of why.
We spend our time talking about food stamps because it is loud in the conservative political stream. The reason the farm bill was called a victory was because the cuts were SIGNIFICANTLY less than the Republicans had originally requested.
Here is an opposite opinion from the Cato Institute.
Here is the folks in MA talking about what the loss of that “loophole” will mean for recipients.
And the other part of the Farm Bill that we never seem to talk about – farm subsidies.
We will be talking about all of this in the Food Insecurity section of the class, but you get the idea of how complicated it is to really know “the facts”.