Senate Farm Bill Released, Markup Scheduled for This Week
On Friday, June 8, the Senate Agriculture Committee released their draft Farm Bill and announced that the committee would be “marking up” the bill during an executive session on Wednesday, June 13. The bill is bipartisan in nature and, unlike the House bill, it does not contain new work requirements for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients. The Committee reported out the bill by a vote of 20-1 yesterday and leadership has indicated the bill will be on the floor by the 4th of July.
The House Farm Bill failed in May due to unrelated issues, and House leadership has indicated it will be back on the House floor by June 22. Once both bills have passed, the difficult task of reconciling the two very different versions of the bill will begin. CDA is heartened that currently, neither version of the bill includes any limitation on the types of food sold under SNAP or the types of retailers that can accept SNAP.