Grassley Works To Ensure Farm Payments Go To Those Who Need It Most

Press Release

Senator Chuck Grassley today continued his efforts to keep only 10 percent of farmers from receiving 72 percent of the benefits from the farm program payments. Grassley offered an amendment to the budget resolution that was being debated in the Senate Budget Committee that would cap farm payments at $250,000 per farmer. The amendment failed by a vote of 10-13. Grassley is a senior member of the committee.

"We face enormous budget pressures and this amendment would have saved a good deal of money and helped pay for important legislation that the Senate will work on later this year," Grassley said. "The only way we're going to keep urban support for a farm program is to have policy that both protects family farmers and makes sure that big farms aren't being subsidized to get bigger. The policy changes in the farm bill didn't go far enough in that direction."

Grassley said that farm payments were originally designed to benefit our small and medium sized farmers, but instead have gone to just the opposite, resulting in the demise of farmers that need assistance the most.

The Grassley amendment would have placed a $20,000 cap on Direct Payments, a $30,000 cap on Counter Cyclical Payments, and a $75,000 cap on marketing loan gains, Commodity Certificates and Loan Deficiency Payments.

The amendment would have saved $235 million over five years. Half of the savings from the cap placed on farm payments in Grassley's amendment would have been redirected for child nutrition programs and the other half for deficit reduction.

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