FUNDING WILL DROP FOR NEXT FARM BILL

Agriculture lawmakers are on track to have about $130 billion less in funding for the next farm bill than they did when they wrote the last law. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that farm and nutrition programs would cost about $822 billion over a decade, or $679 billion for SNAP and $143 billion for commodity subsidies, crop insurance, conservation and other ag programs. In 2014, the CBO estimated that the final version of the farm bill would cost $956 billion over a decade. Some of the prospective cuts are based on actual program spending results since 2014.

SNAP, for example, cost about $359 billion over the past 5 years, or nearly $32 billion less than originally estimated by the CBO just before the 2014 farm bill was passed.

Source: Politico, 7/5/17, Farm Bill Cuts