80% of Nearly $1 Trillion Farm Bill Goes to Food Stamps

Roughly 80% of the Senate’s $955 billion farm bill, which is expected to pass this week, will go to bankroll food stamps over the next ten years.

“The trillion-dollar farm and food stamp bill should not be called the ‘Farm Bill,'” said Heritage Action for America CEO Michael A. Needham in an email. “Washington doesn’t want Americans to know that 80 percent of the spending in the bill goes to fund Obama’s big-government, food stamp agenda.

The other 20% provides farmers with price supports and revenue guarantees. Needham says that is “equally disturbing.”

“The appalling truth is that many people are paid to grow nothing. The main recipients of the subsidies in the bill are the rich and famous, including families of current members of Congress and the USDA secretary Tom Vilsack,” writes Needham. “Big farmers with record high incomes, record low debt, and vastly improved farm technology are getting your taxpayer money.”

Conservatives have complained that the farm bill violates a GOP pledge to end the practice of “logrolling”–bundling unpopular bills with essential legislation. 

The House version of the Farm Bill costs taxpayers $940 billion over ten years and contains a provision that would authorize a new tax on rocks.