Blog: Rep. DeSantis Statement on the Farm Bill Conference Report

Statement

The House just passed a $1 trillion farm bill (bill length: 950 pages). I voted nay because the farm bill conference report is a bad deal for taxpayers and contains little in the way of meaningful reforms. The article below provides a good rundown of some of the problems with the bill and the less-than-transparent process that produced it.

Here are a few issues that I found especially noteworthy:

1. The conference report contains a tax on Christmas trees.

2. The conference report creates new agriculture subsidy programs that are tied to current commodity prices, which means that if commodity prices decline from their current high levels, the taxpayer will be on the hook for billions of dollars more than what is currently forecasted.

3. None of the reforms to the food stamp programs -- such as work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents -- were included in the conference report. The program has quadrupled in cost since 2000 and has doubled since 2008 and needs to be reformed.

4. The wasteful catfish inspection program was re-inserted in the conference report. This is an entirely duplicative and unnecessary program that wastes millions of dollars a year.

Source