House Ag Budget Plan Tightens SNAP, Expands Farm Safety Net

By Ryan Hanrahan

Agri-Pulse’s Philip Brasher and Rebekah Alvey reported that “House Republicans are proposing to cut $290 billion from nutrition assistance spending over the next 10 years and use some of the savings to increase spending on commodity programs, crop insurance and other farm bill programs.”

“The draft text released Monday evening for the House Agriculture Committee’s piece of a massive budget reconciliation bill is designed to comply with the panel’s instructions to make a $230 billion net reduction in projected spending over the next 10 years,” Brasher and Alvey reported. Progressive Farmer’s Chris Clayton reported that “the Ag Committee is set to begin its markup on Tuesday at 6:30 CDT.”

“The bill’s agriculture provisions would increase Price Loss Coverage reference prices by 10–20%, in line with the farm bill the committee approved a year ago,” Brasher and Alvey reported. “The bill also would increase the Agriculture Risk Coverage guarantee to 90% and allow producers to enroll as many as 30 million new base acres that would be eligible for PLC or ARC coverage.”

“The individual limit for commodity program payments would be increased from $125,000 to $155,000 and indexed to inflation. For crop insurance, the premium subsidy for the supplemental coverage option would be raised from 65% to 80%,” Brasher and Alvey reported. “The bill also would bring Inflation Reduction Act conservation funding into the farm bill baseline but remove requirements that limited the funding to climate-smart practices.”

“Funding for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program would rise from $2.66 billion in fiscal 2026 to $3.26 billion in fiscal 2031. Funding for the Conservation Stewardship Program would go from $1.3 billion in FY26 to $1.38 billion in FY31,” Brasher and Alvey reported. “Trade promotion programs also would get $489.5 million a year through 2031, under the bill. Of that amount, $400 million a year would go to the Market Access Program. The Foreign Market Development would be funded at $69 million a year.”

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Politico’s Grace Yarrow reported that “the panel’s proposal will hit the $230 billion instructed savings target by forcing states to pay for part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program using a sliding scale based on their payment error rates, beginning fiscal year 2028.”

“States with the lowest payment error rates would pay for 5 percent of SNAP benefits, while states with error rates above 10% are on the hook for 25% of benefits,” Yarrow reported. “That skews the financial burden to states like Alaska, South Carolina, Hawaii, Delaware, and New Jersey in particular.”

“SNAP, which assists more than 42 million low-income people in the U.S. with buying food, is currently completely paid for by the federal government,” Yarrow reported. “House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson, R-Pa., said the only way to save $230 billion is to either share SNAP costs with states or directly cut benefits — the latter of which has been a non-starter for many Republicans, including Thompson and the White House.”

“But agreeing on a cost-share plan hasn’t been smooth sailing. Some state officials in both red and blue states have already publicly opposed the idea, warning that it would result in cuts to benefits due to already-slim state budgets,” Yarrow reported. “House Agriculture Committee Republicans had to revise their cost-share proposal several times after pushback from centrists within their own caucus, which delayed their initial markup.”

And “even if the House is able to pass Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ with the SNAP policy in tact, Senate Agriculture Chair John Boozman, R-Ark., has warned that some Republican senators are already concerned about pushing costs of the program onto states, saying it would mean a ‘significant burden … for a lot of our poorer states,’” Yarrow reported.

45Z Clean Fuels Production Tax Credit

Progressive Farmer’s Clayton reported that “biofuel producers will get an extension to tap into the 45Z Clean Fuels Production Tax Credit as part of the massive tax-cut package released Monday by Congress.”

“Under the bill, the tax credit would be extended until the end of 2031. The bill also modifies the 45Z to prevent the use of certain foreign feedstocks, such as used cooking oil from China. Fuels for the tax credit under the bill would be limited to feedstocks produced or grown in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico,” Clayton reported. “The bill would also limit federal agencies from attributing any greenhouse gas emissions to ‘indirect land use change.’ There is also a special provision that opens up the 45Z tax credit to transportation fuels derived from animal manure.”

House Ag Budget Plan Tightens SNAP, Expands Farm Safety Net was originally published by Farmdoc.