House Approves Farm Bill with Work Requirements for Food Stamps

The House passed a Farm bill on Thursday that includes work requirements for food stamps.

The House passed the Farm bill 213-211, featuring entirely Republican votes and no Democratic support for the measure.

The House voted on the measure after the Goodlatte immigration bill failed to pass through the House. Speaker Paul Ryan previously failed to pass the Farm bill through the House in May because the House Freedom Caucus did not believe that the leadership would put the Goodlatte immigration bill to a floor vote.

The Senate passed a farm bill out of the Senate Agriculture Committee on Tuesday, which does not include work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), otherwise known as food stamps.

When reporters asked House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) what he thought about the Senate not including work requirements for food stamps, Meadows sarcastically responded, “I’m shocked.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-NC) noted on Thursday that the work requirement sets a “low bar” of 20 hours of work, education, or community service to obtain food stamps.

Congressman Warren Davidson (R-OH) said “hopefully” President Donald Trump will declare that he will not sign a farm bill that does not include work requirements for SNAP recipients.

Robert Doar, a poverty scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), wrote an op-ed earlier in June that work requirements for food stamps will help “fight poverty at its roots.”

A new survey from the Foundation for Government Accountability revealed that more than 82 percent of Americans, including 94 percent of Republicans and 71 percent of Democrats, support work requirements for food stamp recipients.

House Agriculture Chairman Michael Conaway (R-TX) told Breitbart News in an interview in April that the work requirement in the farm bill  “is an opportunity to help people who want to help themselves. Most Americans are very supportive of that idea.”