The Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday finally approved a five-year farm bill designed to cut spending through a combination of cuts in in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance along with decreases in farm subsidies.
About $400 million of the $2.4 billion in proposed savings comes from cuts in SNAP – popularly known as food stamps – eliciting outcry from a number of Democratic senators such as Kristen Gillibrand of New York.
Much of the rest comes from cuts in direct payments to farmers, a controversial program that, critics say, end up costing the government more for food production than the production is worth.
Host Carmen Russell-Sluchansky spoke with Bruce A. Babcock, a professor of energy economics at Iowa State University, to discuss the bill.
