Gallego Votes for Passage of 5-Year Farm Bill

Press Release

Washington, D.C. -- U.S. Representative Pete P. Gallego (D-Alpine) today supported the 2014 Farm Bill. The bill passed the U.S. House of Representative by a vote of 251 to 166, and now heads to the Senate for consideration. He is a member of the House Agriculture Committee.

"This is a bill that should have been passed by the last Congress two years ago," U.S. Rep. Gallego said. "I am happy that common sense prevailed and that leadership came to a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on a bill so important to Texas."

The farm bill is an important piece of legislation. It deals with diverse issues from insurance for farmers and ranchers to research and education to food stamps and free school lunches and assistance for rural communities across America.

"It is important that our agriculture community have safety nets in place to produce the food we need," he said. "It's also important that, in the greatest nation in the world, people are able to feed their families with good and healthy food."

The farm bill makes reforms to current programs that will save billions of taxpayer dollars over the next 10 years. Many programs are streamlined or consolidated. The bill eliminates direct payments to farmers, but still encourages access to healthy foods for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients.

"While this is a good step forward, the bill is not perfect," U.S. Rep. Gallego said. "Provisions regarding Country of Origin Labeling (COOL), which have been widely opposed and have strained relations with Mexico and Canada, were neither clarified nor removed. This issue must be addressed so that trade relationships with our neighbors can continue to prosper."

About 4 million people will not lose their SNAP benefits.

"Originally, the House version of the bill, which I opposed, would have cut SNAP by $40 billion," he said. "The compromise cuts the nutrition by only $8.6 billion -- returning $31.4 billion to the program -- and removes restrictive language that would have made it more difficult for families to put food on the table."

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