Tag Archives: farm bill

A Reasonable Law

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There has been some discussion lately about the misuse of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. I agree with the idea of not using them for soda and candy or fast food, but some of the rules seem a little picky. Senator Fetterman has decided to fix one rather strange rule. Under current SNAP rules, SNAP recipients can purchase cooked rotisserie chickens that have been cooled down, but it does not allow the purchase of hot prepared foods (hot rotisserie chickens). That makes no sense at all.

On Thursday, Just the News reported:

A bill that would allow recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to buy hot rotisserie chicken is one step closer to becoming law.

On Thursday, the U.S. House voted 384-35 in support of an amendment to the Farm Bill, which would modify the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to law to allow the purchase of hot rotisserie chicken for SNAP beneficiaries.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., introduced bipartisan legislation labeled the “Hot Rotisserie Chicken Act,” in the Senate a week ago to change the current statute, which allows SNAP recipients to purchase cooked rotisserie chickens that have been cooled down, but it does not allow the purchase of hot prepared foods.

He took to social media on Thursday evening to celebrate its passage in the U.S. House.

“Doesn’t only include my crew’s favorite + affordable $4.99 Costco rotisserie — but ANY hot rotisserie,” he said in part of social media post. “Feeding families: a (rotisserie) chicken in every pot.”

SNAP to include HOT ROTISSERIE CHICKEN.384-35! Doesn’t only include my crew’s favorite + affordable $4.99 Costco rotisserie 😜 — but ANY hot rotisserie. Feeding families: a (rotisserie) chicken in every pot. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/N9bNfynRKx— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) April 30, 2026

The article concludes:

Fetterman, a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, has also backed other efforts addressing SNAP benefits including Bennet’s Hot Food Act, which would allow all hot foods to be eligible under the program, and the Cybersecurity for SNAP Act, which would increase the security of EBT cards to prevent skimming.

The measure now heads to the Senate for consideration as part of the farm bill, according to The Hill.

A number of stores sell rotisserie chickens both hot and cold. This law will make life easier for working parents.

About That Farm Bill

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On Friday, Breitbart posted an article about the ‘Farm Bill.’ Evidently the Farm Bill is not about farms–it’s about food stamps.

The article reports:

The bulk of the Farm Bill is funding for food stamps, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said Thursday during an interview on Breitbart News Daily.

Sen. Johnson walked through some of the issues with the original 1,537-page continuing resolution (CR) negotiated by Speaker Johnson, which is full of pork. One of the stumbling blocks for some is the inclusion of the Farm Bill in the spending deal, but the senator said it is not what it seems.

“It’s a food stamp bill,” Johnson revealed. “80 percent of the Farm Bill is funding for food stamps, and Obama dramatically increased eligibility.”

The article notes:

“It used to be in prosperous times, maybe 6 percent of the population was on food stamps. Then [the] recessions, go up to 12 [percent] 13 [percent], pretty well stuck at that higher limit nowadays, because we pay people not to work,” Johnson said.

“Let’s be honest, we pay people not to work,” he said, noting that the U.S. welfare program is very generous.

“People don’t pay taxes on them [welfare benefits]. We have a huge transfer of wealth from working Americans to people who don’t work. And we’re a compassionate society. We want to help people who can’t help themselves. We want to help people help themselves, but we created a far too large dependent class. That’s got to end,” he said. “We need to get people off the couch. They’ve got to enter the workforce and grow our economy.”

Let’s put work requirements back in order to receive any kind of public assistance. We can exclude the elderly and those with young children, but let’s put people back to work.

When Congress Fails To Do Its Job, The Executive Branch Has To Do It

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The Washington Times posted an article today about the Farm Bill that was recently passed. The House of Representatives added a more stringent work requirement to the Food Stamps Program, but the Senate eliminated the requirement. Thus the Farm Bill as it currently stands puts a 20-hour-per-week work requirement only on people between the ages of 18 and 49 who receive food stamps.

The article reports:

President Trump moved Thursday to tighten work requirements for people who receive food stamps, after Congress failed to include the proposal in a $400 billion farm bill that’s headed to the president’s desk.

The Agriculture Department said it is proposing a rule on Mr. Trump’s orders that would move “more able-bodied recipients” of food stamps back into working at least 20 hours per week.

“Long-term reliance on government assistance has never been part of the American dream,” said Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. “As we make benefits available to those who truly need them, we must also encourage participants to take proactive steps toward self-sufficiency. Moving people to work is common-sense policy, particularly at a time when the unemployment rate is at a generational low.”

…Currently, able-bodied adults ages 18-49 without children are required to work 20 hours a week to keep their food-stamp benefits. The House measure would have raised the age of recipients subject to work requirements from 49 to 59 and required parents with children older than 6 to work or participate in job training.

The Labor Force Participation Rate currently stands at 52.9 percent. The Unemployment Rate currently stands at 3.7 percent. Wages at all levels have risen under President Trump. Inflation for 2018 is slightly over 2 percent. There is no reason anyone collecting food stamps cannot find a place to work for 20 hours a week or enter a job-training program that will help them find a job that pays enough for them to get off of food stamps. The Agriculture Department is doing the right thing in looking into strengthening the work requirements to collect food stamps.

You Had One Job…

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In 1996 The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act was passed, giving states control of welfare.

The site history.com reports:

Building on policies that had been passed by Reagan, and a foundational principle of “personal responsibility,” TANF added work requirements for aid, shrinking the number of adults who could qualify for benefits. This legislation also created caps for how long and how much aid a person could receive, and well as instituting harsher punishments for recipients who did not comply with the requirements.

Under President Obama, those requirements were loosened because of the recession. The Republican Congress under President Trump had discussed putting work requirements back, but somehow those requirements didn’t make it into the farm bill.

Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial yesterday about the recently passed farm bill. The article notes that there was bi-partisan support for the farm bill.

The editorial states:

How bad is the bill? Even Iowa Republican Sen. Charles E. Grassley, himself a farmer, was outraged because the package granted federal subsidies even to distant relatives of farmers that don’t farm.

…Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group, a left-leaning environmentalist organization that has been critical of farm subsidies, notes that more than 1,000 “city slickers” who live in major American cities get farm subsidies. It’s absurd.

All in all, the nearly $1 trillion a year spent on farm subsidies and food aid is a massive waste, given that farmers on average have higher incomes than those who are taxed to subsidize them

As Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute points out, farm incomes in 2017 were 32% higher than average U.S. household incomes, while about 60% of subsidies for the three main farm programs went to the biggest 10% of farms. Welfare for the rich.

Meanwhile, the the new bill also provides “promotional funds” for farmers markets, research for organic farming, and money to train more farmers. It also grants more money to veteran and minority farmers. Everyone gets a handout, it seems, whether needed or not.

The editorial concludes:

In our increasingly socialized farm economy, nearly everyone is too big to fail. Which means the rest of us pay for it. President Trump, focused on other things, will likely sign this awful Farm Bill. After all, it has that golden seal of congressional approval: It was “bipartisan.” All that means is both sides found ways to rip off taxpayers.

The bill did not include work requirements for food stamps recipients. The Republican Congress had one job regarding the farm bill…