WASHINGTON - The Senate approved a sweeping new farm bill on Thursday that would cost nearly $1 trillion over the next 10 years, financing dozens of price support and crop insurance programs for farmers and food assistance for low-income families.
The bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, 64 to 35. It now goes to the House, where it faces a much tougher road because conservative lawmakers want to make deeper cuts in the food stamp program, which serves about 45 million Americans. "This bill represents significant reform," said Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan and chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. "It cuts subsidies, it cuts the deficit and it creates jobs."
Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas and the ranking member on the committee, called the legislation the best bill possible. "It shows what can happen if we break the logjam of partisanship and work together to get something done," Mr. Roberts said.
Although the bill is known as the farm bill, the majority of the spending, about $80 billion a year, goes to the food stamp program. The Senate bill would cut a total of $23.6 billion from current spending levels, including about $4.5 billion from food stamps, but senators rejected several proposals that would have made even deeper cuts.
Ms. Stabenow said savings from the food stamp program would come mainly from changes including banning lottery winners from getting assistance.
The House Republican budget introduced earlier this year by Representative Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, would reduce food stamp spending by about $134 billion over the next decade and turn the program into block grants for the states.
In the House, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee, Representative Frank D. Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma, said work on the bill would begin on July 11. He said committee members would work on a spending bill next week. Congress will recess for the July 4 holiday week.
"Although there will be differences between the Senate approach and our own, I hope my colleagues are encouraged by this success when we meet on the 11th to consider our own legislation," Mr. Lucas said.
Although the Senate bill makes significant changes to some farm programs and eliminates or consolidates others, it leaves in place several Depression-era programs like supports for American sugar growers that set prices and limit imports.
The bill eliminates about $5 billion a year in direct payments that have been given to farmers and farmland owners, whether or not they grew crops. It makes the highly subsidized crop insurance program the primary safety net when crop prices drop. Currently, the government subsidizes about 62 percent of the crop insurance premiums, and the policies typically guarantee 75 percent to 85 percent of a farmer's revenue. The crop insurance subsidy would cost about $9 billion a year.
But for the first time crop insurance would be subject to payment limits, and recipients of the subsidy would have to follow soil and water conservation requirements, as they do in other farm programs. The bill reduces the premium subsidy for farmers with adjusted gross incomes of more than $750,000. The measure would affect only 1,500 out of the 1.5 million farmers and save $1 billion over 10 years.
Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, a Washington research organization, said the bill failed to achieve real savings because it expanded crop insurance. Still, he said, "We applaud the provisions that require farmers who receive crop insurance subsidies to carry out basic environmental protections on their farms and to reduce insurance subsidies for the largest and most successful agribusinesses."
While most agriculture groups support the Senate bill, many Southern farmers, especially rice and peanut farmers, say it provides an inadequate safety net because it eliminates direct payments.
"Crop insurance does not provide adequate coverage for peanut farmers when there are fluctuations in the market," said Armond Morris, chairman of the Georgia Peanut Commission in Tifton, Ga.
Food and nutrition groups said they were disappointed by the food stamp cuts. While they said the bill provided incentives for low-income families to buy more fruits and vegetables, they argue that the cuts will have a devastating effect on low-income families during a time of high unemployment.
Feeding America, an antihunger group based in Chicago, said the cuts would reduce benefits by about $90 per family and affect 500,000 households in 15 states.
"Now is the time to protect and strengthen food nutrition assistance, not cut it," said Eric Olsen, the group's senior vice president of government relations and public policy.
