Brown, others react to Boozman farm bill text 

VAIL, Colo. — Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, the vice ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee, said here Monday she is “encouraged” by the farm bill proposal that Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., released on Friday and on which he plans a markup on Thursday. 

The bill delays a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that requires states to pay a portion of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from fiscal year 2028 until fiscal year 2029. 

In an interview with The Hagstrom Report on the sidelines of the American Sugar Alliance’s International Sweetener Symposium, Brown added that she is not sure the one-year delay is long enough and that she would “love to see a longer delay” because the states cannot afford to pay for the cost of SNAP benefits. 

Brandon Lipps, an Agriculture Department deputy undersecretary for nutrition, food and consumer services in the first Trump administration and co-founder of Caprock Strategies, a consulting firm, told The Hagstrom Report here at the sugar meeting that even though states administer the SNAP program “they have little skin in the game.”

Lipps noted that when he was a Texas state legislative aide his job was “to figure out how to maximize” federal spending. 

“There is a good public policy discussion to be had about how much the states should contribute” to SNAP, he said. 

Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute, criticized the SNAP delay. 

“The Senate’s revised farm bill text continues Congress’s ‘dessert first, spinach later’ approach to budgeting: promise savings later while spending more today,” Boccia said. “Once Congress establishes a precedent for delaying accountability, it becomes easier to delay it again, or for a future Congress to abandon the measure altogether.”

Center for Science in the Public Interest Director of Legislative Affairs Ben Feldman said, “While billed as a revised proposal, the changes are largely cosmetic and do little to address the bill’s fundamental shortcomings. Most notably, the bill still fails to restore support for families struggling with the high cost of food.”

Meanwhile, several farm groups issued statements on the Boozman text. 

The National Corn Growers Association said it had sent Senate Agriculture Committee members a letter expressing support for the bill, particularly because it included a provision to allow the sale of E15 fuel year round and nationwide. 

The Crop Insurance and Reinsurance Bureau said it “applauds the committee’s willingness to address regulatory challenges and implement key policy changes to improve the farmer’s crop insurance experience while strengthening the public-private partnership that makes crop insurance the most efficient and effective delivery of assistance to farmers.”

National Association of Wheat Farmers President Jamie Kress, an Idaho farmer, said, “We appreciate Chairman Boozman and the Senate Agriculture Committee for keeping this process moving and recognizing the challenges facing producers. As the committee considers the bill, we urge senators to strengthen it by permanently codifying the transfer of the Food for Peace program to USDA, where it can remain closely connected to American agriculture and U.S.-grown commodities.”

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., said he was pleased that Boozman had moved forward, Politico reported. 

“I think Senator [John] Boozman did a really good job with it,” Thompson told reporters, noting he was supportive of ethanol fuel language included, Politico said.