Conference Report on H.R. 2642, Federal Agriculture Reform and Risk Management Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, rather than producing a farm bill that meets our traditional responsibilities as a Congress to support working families and farmers, this bill will do great damage to the Nation's most vulnerable citizens. This bill slashes $8.6 billion from food stamps, our Nation's most important antihunger program--this is in addition to the $11 billion already cut--while it goes out of its way to reopen the loopholes that benefit millionaires and billionaires.
Interesting enough, this bill increases the deficit this year, and the Congressional Budget Office has said that it doesn't save the $23 billion that it claims to save. This bill results in winners and losers.
Winners--wealthy farmers and agribusinesses who will be able to pocket crop insurance subsidies and other government handouts beyond the already generous limits passed earlier by both the House and the Senate. The Congressional Budget Office, again, says it increases spending on crop insurance by $5.7 billion.
The Senate passed a bipartisan amendment to reduce the level of Federal premium support for crop insurance participants who make over $750,000, but the conference raised it to $900,000--winners.
Against the expressed wishes of both Houses, the bill's drafters reopened a loophole which was closed in both the House and the Senate bills which allows farming enterprises to overcollect on commodity payments--winners.
But then who are the losers? And there are losers in the farm bill. The losers are the 850,000 low-income households all over America, 1.7 million Americans who will lose 66 meals a month because of these cuts to food stamps.
Who are we talking about? Children who will go hungry and spend all the next day at school. They will go to bed hungry, spend the next day at school unable to concentrate because they are thinking about food. Veterans, roughly 900,000 of whom receive food stamps, and working families who will face an empty fridge and a gnawing pain in their stomach for weeks and weeks. Seniors have to choose between food or warmth, whose health will deteriorate for want of sustenance.
These are our own people we are consigning to this fate, hardworking people in our districts and in our communities. And if you vote for this bill, you will have to look them in the eye and tell them to go without food, that they have to endure hunger because we had to give more handouts to millionaires and to billionaires.
That is what this farm bill is about. Make no mistake. It increases hunger rather than decreases hunger in America. It picks winners and losers rather than ensuring we are supporting those that grow and those that consume the food we produce in this Nation of plenty.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentlewoman has expired.
Mr. McGOVERN. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.
Ms. DeLAURO. It picks winners and losers rather than ensuring that we are supporting those that grow and those that consume the food that we produce in this Nation of plenty, which is what farm bills have been about in the past.
I have negotiated nutrition titles in farm bills. This is a farm bill that undermines the health and the well-being of the most vulnerable in our society.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''
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Ms. DeLAURO. I thank the gentleman. I just wanted to reiterate one thing. Some may view that I represent the State of Connecticut, the Third Congressional District in Connecticut, and, in fact, what do we know about farming? The fact is that we do. We have dairy farmers, people with specialty crops, and included in my history in this great body, I served as chair of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Appropriations. I also served as the ranking member, and, as I mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to be part of the conference committee on the farm bill in 2008 and helped to negotiate the nutrition title.
If I can make one or two more points. This farm bill says that it is going to save $23 billion. They count savings from over a year ago. They talk about $16.6 billion. The Congressional Budget Office says that even as we cut that $8.6 billion from the food stamp program, taking meals away from 1.7 million of the most vulnerable in our society, we are increasing spending on crop insurance by $5.7 billion in the farm bill.
In case folks do not know, the fact of the matter is that Americans subsidize crop insurance. We pick up over 60 percent of the cost of the premiums on crop insurance. We pay 100 percent of the administrative costs in terms of crop insurance. We have 26 individuals who get at least $1 million in a crop insurance subsidy, and we can't find out who they are.
While the cuts in food stamp benefits are going to be felt immediately across those 850,000 households, primarily made up of children, the elderly, disabled, and veterans, few if any of the Congressional Budget Office projected commodity programs savings may ever be realized if crop prices continue to fall. This is reflected in that CBO score that the deficit would be increased this year with this bill. Only food stamps would be cut this year. We should vote against this bill.
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