This week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made ending food assistance for many hungry people one of his demands for raising the debt ceiling.
At the New York Stock Exchange, McCarthy said our social safety net should be a “hand up, not a handout,” and government programs “are supposed to be temporary, not permanent.”
Perhaps he should apply that logic to the taxpayer-funded federal farm subsidies and disaster relief payments for the nearly 20,000 farmers who received them for 37 consecutive years. Collectively, these farmers received more than $18 billion, or an average of nearly $1 million per recipient per year.
Four farmers who live in McCarthy’s district together took in $14,908,825 between 1985 and 2021:
Anti-hunger assistance programs are subject to much stricter income and asset tests than farm subsidies. As a result, poor people remain on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, better known as food stamps, for an average of just 12 months. By contrast, farmers remain eligible for subsidies as long as their average annual adjusted gross income is less than $900,000, or less than $1.8 million for farm couples, and their farm sales exceed $1,000.
McCarthy’s top allies in the fight to reduce food assistance for hungry people also represent many farmers receiving payments every year for 37 years.
Top of the list? Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who represents 1,368 farmers who taken in payments for 37 years in a row.
Johnson is the leader of 24 House Republicans seeking to deny hungry people food assistance. Farmers represented by these lawmakers have collected at least $41 billion in farm subsidies since 1995. And 3,310 of the farmers in those districts received subsidies for 37 consecutive years.
Other House members representing more than 1,000 farmers getting payments for nearly four decades include Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.).
Even worse: Three of the Republicans trying to make it harder for hungry people to get a meal are collecting farm subsidies themselves, either directly or through family members.
- A ranch owned by Rep. August Pfluger (R-Texas) has received at least $369,735 in farm subsidies.
- A farm owned by the husband of Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ind.) has taken in at least $991,435 in farm subsidies.
- A farm owned by the father of Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) has collected at least $123,165 in farm subsidies.
Instead of reducing dependence on farm subsidies, the 2018 Farm Bill created new loopholes by allowing payments to cousins, nieces and nephews of farmers, no matter where they live or work.
Some subsidy recipients who got payment for 37 consecutive years neither work nor live on a farm. In fact, 150 of these 19,654 long-term recipients live in the nation’s 50 largest cities, despite a requirement that farm subsidy recipients be “actively engaged in farming.”
If McCarthy wants to balance the budget, he should target wealthy farmers who receive subsidies, not take food assistance away from hungry people – including the one in four children in the U.S. who receive SNAP benefits.
