NAPA, Calif. — House Agriculture General Farm Commodities and Risk Management Subcommittee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, told the nation’s sugar growers here today that he expects Congress to pass the farm bill, but he also made a pitch for the bill with big cuts to the nutrition program that House Majority Eric Cantor, R-Va., plans to bring to the House floor in September.

Conaway made the remarks just as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities issued statements on Cantor’s bill on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP or food stamps, and on a cut in SNAP benefits that is scheduled to go into effect on November 1. (See story below.)

“We are almost there on the farm bill and I think we are going to get there,” Conaway told beet and cane growers at the American Sugar Alliance International Sweetener Symposium.


Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas
Conaway told the growers they need to tell members of Congress that they need to pass the farm bill and that they do not “buy into” another extension of the 2008 bill.

He said they should keep the message simple that “This year we are as close as we have been and we need to finish this thing … just get it done.”

“Let me caution you,” when talking to members, he said. “Don’t beat them up about mechanics and processes, just stick to the theme.”

“Don’t get into the weeds,” he added. “Don’t navigate all the things that are going on between the House and the Senate — whether we have appointed conferees.”

He told the sugar growers they should speak out against another farm bill extension, which he said is “being promoted by those who want another bite at this deal. If we have to repeat these efforts again next year I am not sure we can get the same good results.”

Conaway praised the sugar growers for convincing the Senate and the House to vote to keep the current program rather than accept amendments promoted by sweetener users.

On the nutrition title that was part of the comprehensive farm bill that failed on the House floor in June and was not part of the bill that the House passed in July, Conaway said he was “one of those, like many, who wanted to keep them together. I didn’t see how we would get either passed separately. I had seen the historical successes. We came out of committee with a great bipartisan piece of work.”

Conaway blamed the “nutrition folks” for the failure of the comprehensive farm bill on the floor. The passage of the farm-program-only bill on the House floor with only Republican votes was “something I thought couldn’t be done.”

Although he said he doesn’t know “what the next steps” on the farm bill will be, he said he considers Cantor’s nutrition bill to be “much better policy than the one that came out of committee.”

The bill Cantor is putting forward would cut $40 billion from food stamps over 10 years.

“Instead of focusing on the dollars,” he said, the Cantor bill “will focus on policy.”

The bill would end the use of categorical eligibility, forcing the states to make higher payments under the Low-Income Heating and Energy Program in order for people to be eligible for food stamps, which combined was projected to save $20.5 billion in the committee-passed bill.

The Cantor bill also, he said, would “add a couple of really, really good public policy pieces to it” — including a requirement that able-bodied adults without dependents and able-bodied adults with only one dependent would not be able to obtain food stamps without working.

“Those are workers, those are folks who should have a job, who should not be on food stamps,” he said. If people “earn their way off food stamps,” Conaway added, then the states can keep half the money saved in food stamp benefits.

In an appeal for support for the Cantor bill, Conaway gazed over the audience and said, “I am looking at a bunch of folks who get up every day. You guys know what work is about.”

Conaway said he believes the Cantor nutrition bill will pass, indicating that although he is not sure there are 218 Republican votes — a majority — for the bill, perhaps some Democrats will support it because it eliminates “moral hazards.”

He also made a pitch for the House farm bill provision that would repeal permanent laws from 1938 and 1949 and make the commodity title of the new farm bill permanent law.

Conaway said it would be easier to defend a new permanent law than the old one, but he added that it could make the job of passing future farm bills more difficult. Using the possibility that the 1938 and 1949 laws would go into effect as a weapon to pass new farm bills is “artificial,” he said, and hard to defend to members of Congress who do not come from rural districts.

“Defending rural America is difficult,” Conaway said. “Keeping nutrition and farm programs together “sets people’s hair on fire,” he added.

In an apparent reference to both the 1938 and 1949 laws and keeping nutrition and farm programs together, Conaway said that “moving forward” defending “artificial things” is harder for members to do because “they have to go against public opinion. We shouldn’t cling to things that do not mean anything except to insiders.”

Conaway said he does “not have insight” into the farm bill conference, but noted that House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., will chair it. He said he is not sure if Lucas will put the farm programs and nutrition programs back together or keep them apart.

And he noted that if the bill doesn’t change food stamps, the program will continue as is.

“Food stamps are going to truck along as is unless Congress does something specific,” he said.

He said he could make the argument that a bill covering the farm safety net and rural development is “good for America because rural America is “the reservoir for all things good for America.”

Conaway ended his speech by saying he wanted to “take my member-of-Congress hat off and speak to you as a citizen.”

“Our founding fathers knew that only a moral people can self-govern,” he said, while “an amoral people cheat, lie, take advantage.”

“I am genuinely concerned about the direction our country is going,” Conaway said. “When you sing ‘God Bless America,’ what are you asking God to bless?”

He then asked whether God would bless “the abortion industry.”

“I am a Christian, try to live by the Judeo-Christian model,” Conaway said. “We are not on that path.” The United States has “fiscal issues,” he acknowledged, but said the biggest issues are “morals and the deterioration in the family.”

“God laid that on my heart back in October and I try to say it to every audience,” Conaway concluded. “God has a role for the United States.”

He added that he believes no other country on Earth “has been the force of good that the United States has been. God bless you and God bless Texas.”