The “Big, Beautiful Bill” took on much of the heavy lifting typically found in the Farm Bill. Now, ag leaders are turning their focus to the issues still left unsolved by President Trump’s legislation.
House Ag Committee Chair GT Thompson tells Politico that he is still on track to create a new Farm Bill, and he expects it to cost less than $8 billion. Thompson is looking to include bills that were agreed upon when his Committee advanced its Farm Bill last year. The reconciliation package signed late last week handled SNAP, which takes up most Farm Bill dollars. There was a lot of pushback surrounding the program, specifically when it came to overpayments.
“USDA has pointed out that there’s about $10 billion a year in waste, just in the SNAP program. Fraud, improper payments, not going to children that you hear about on the floor…it’s going to improper payments, to fraud—$10 billion a year,” said Congressman Steve Scalise.
This year, USDA found the error rate at just below 11 percent for the entire SNAP program. The new law will use these error rates to determine what states owe moving forward. States can use their error rates from this year or next to calculate their match. Then, starting in 2029, the rate would be based on the average from the three years prior.
