Washington, DC (June 22, 2018) – The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) sharply criticized the passage of the farm bill, H.R.2., last night. The five-year bill will force 2 million Americans to lose some or all their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or food assistance benefits.
“The House vote was a vote to make it harder for struggling families to put food on the table and feed their children,” said Diane Randall, Executive Secretary for FCNL. “The farm bill is the largest food assistance program in the country, and it is immoral to take food away from the mouths of mothers and children.”
The House farm bill eliminates state flexibility to respond to the needs of their communities by ending broad-based eligibility. It also creates a huge new bureaucracy that states are ill-equipped to manage, while failing to provide a fraction of the necessary funding to implement it.
The farm bill, formally known as the Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018 (H.R.2) represents a sharp departure from the Senate Agriculture Committee’s bipartisan farm bill, which the committee passed just last week. That version of the bill improves SNAP, strengthens pilot programs, and connects more SNAP recipients with work opportunities.
“The House farm bill ignores evidence-based policy by disregarding existing demonstration projects intended to test the best ways to get more people into the workforce,” said Amelia Kegan, Legislative Director for Domestic Policy at FCNL. “Taking away vital food assistance under the guise of work requirements is bad policy and an assault on vulnerable families.”
FCNL urges the Senate to quickly pass its strongly bipartisan bill without any changes or amendments that would harm SNAP.
“Rather than pushing for a partisan farm bill that takes away vital nutrition assistance from people who need it, Congress should follow the Senate’s example and pass a truly bipartisan bill that seeks to address hunger rather than worsen it,” Randall added.
To learn more, please visit www.fcnl.org.
*Diane Randall and Amelia Kegan are available for interviews to discuss FCNL’s position on the Farm Bill. Please reach out to Adlai Amor at media@fcnl.org or 202-903-2536 for inquiries.