Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and three Democrats who sit on the House Agriculture Committee today told anti-hunger advocates they must lobby against the House farm bill provision that would stop any future noninflationary increases in benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“I am a proud hunger weirdo. Somebody said what they were thinking, and it was pretty disgusting,” Stabenow said at the Food Research & Action Center National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference Breakfast on the Hill.

Stabenow was referring to a comment by a House Agriculture Committee Republican aide at a media briefing that members of organizations like FRAC are “hunger weirdos” that are “in the business of poverty” and “use poor people as props.”

The anti-hunger advocates have been meeting in Washington since Sunday and are lobbying on Capitol Hill today.

Stabenow said she was “so proud” of House Agriculture Committee Democrats who voted “overwhelmingly” if not universally against the Republican-written farm bill that the committee approved recently. Stabenow was referring to the four House Democrats who voted to approve the bill.

Stabenow told the advocates the No. 1 focus of their lobbying had to be that Congress cannot take money from SNAP for “big farm subsidies or anything else.”

The House bill, Stabenow said, “took almost $30 billion from SNAP and gave a 70% increase to the biggest farmers.”

Stabenow was referring to a provision in the House Republican bill that would require all future rewrites of the Thrifty Food Plan on which SNAP benefits are based to be “budget neutral.” The Congressional Budget Office has said the provision would save $27 billion over 10 years. That budget authority could be used for other purposes. The draft written by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., would use $12 billion to $16 billion for other nutrition provisions while the rest would increase spending for agricultural trade promotion and specialty crop programs.

Stabenow’s reference to a 70% increase for the biggest farmers is a reference to another provision in the House bill that would raise the reference prices for commodity subsidies so that farmers could get payments when prices fall to higher levels than in the past. Farm leaders have said the current rates are out of date because both commodity prices and input costs have risen. Stabenow noted that farmers who do not have the “base acres” on which farmers get subsidies would not have access to the program. Stabenow has said she wants to be sure farmers of all types and sizes have access to subsidized crop insurance and other farm programs.

Stabenow said the House GOP farm bill plan is “outrageous.”

“You’re going to tell them that today, right?” Stabenow said to the anti-hunger advocates. She received a round of applause.

“Most importantly what we do is draw a red line: We are not going backwards on SNAP,” Stabenow said, adding that it took 50 years to get an update to SNAP benefits based on what nutritionists and science reports say about what people should be eating.

The next update to the Thrifty Food Plan would increase benefits only 2% to 2.5%, she said.

Stabenow said, “I want farmers of all types to get risk management support, but we are not going to turn our backs on the people most vulnerable, many of whom need a little bit of help for a little bit of time to go on and be successful.”

Reps. Alma Adams, D-N.C.,; Jahana Hayes, D-Conn.; and Jim McGovern, D-Mass., also spoke at the conference.

Adams said that messages about hunger “fell on ears that didn’t want to hear.”

Hayes said, “I did not come to Congress to starve children, and I won’t vote for a bill that does that.”

McGovern told the advocates to make sure that they ask the four Democrats who voted for the GOP bill whether they will side with the rest of the Democrats and vote against it if it comes to the House floor.