As the farm bill approved by the Agriculture Committee last week reaches the Senate floor Monday afternoon, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) will be a few hours into an experiment: eating for a week on the meager food budget afford by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Murphy announced on Twitter that he would take the SNAP Challenge, which is the brainchild of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).

That means Murphy will be eating on a few dollars per day, as his colleagues debate a measure that would cut $4 billion from the SNAP budget over the next decade. Murphy is using the $3 per day allowance FRAC and allies recommended in 2007 guidelines for lawmakers interested in the challenge, although government data shows the program averaged about $4.40/day nationwide in fiscal year 2012.

But if anything, the SNAP Challenge understates the hardships actual SNAP recipients face, both today and in the near future.

Those Americans must make it a full month on SNAP, and statistics show that about 80 percent of a given recipient’s monthly allotment gets spent in the first two weeks of the month:

Additionally, there is already a major cut scheduled for fall of 2013:

It’s harder to quantify another facet of life on SNAP that Murphy’s attempt to raise awareness of the program won’t require him to face: social stigma. The senator won’t have to worry about a cashier loudly asking him to run his Electronic Benefits Transfer card again while other customers wait behind him. He probably won’t experience the judgment of peers described here by Tiffani Stacy of Columbus, TX.

Murphy’s experience of life on SNAP, however muted, ought to help draw attention to the program’s inability to absorb the further cuts Congress has proposed.

The average value of federal food aid will fall to $1.40 per person per meal in November, as a Recovery Act provision expires, but Republicans are already working to impose a further $21 billion in cuts to the program. That’s the upshot of two recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports on the future of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP).

SNAP is authorized through the farm bill, the Senate version of which was passed by the Agriculture Committee Tuesday afternoon. With their counterparts in the GOP-controlled House set to mark up their own farm bill tomorrow – complete with those nearly $21 billion in cuts to SNAP – the Ag Committee senators agreed to $4.1 billion in SNAP cuts on a 15-5 vote.

But while the Senate bill’s cuts to SNAP and increases to crop insurance subsidies represent misplaced priorities, the forthcoming bill from House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) makes the Senate’s food aid cuts look piddling. As CBPP explained this week, Lucas’s bill would boot nearly 2 million Americans off SNAP – and it targets the food aid program for more than half of its total cuts:

The proposed legislation would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) by almost $21 billion over the next decade, eliminating food assistance to nearly 2 million low-income people, mostly working families with children and senior citizens. The proposal reduces total farm bill spending by an estimated $39.7 billion over ten years, so more than half of its cuts come from SNAP.

Lucas’ bill achieves these cuts primarily by repealing a provision of SNAP that allows states to include citizens whose disposable income (after child care expenses, for example) falls below the poverty line, even if their gross incomes are slightly above the SNAP cutoff, or 130 percent of the poverty line. In other words, it targets millions of working poor and elderly who rely on federal food aid and returns them to an actuarial trap of ineligibility.

This year’s proposed bill cuts SNAP even more heavily than the one Lucas’s committee approved in 2012. While Rep. Steve King (R-IA) recently said the proposed cuts would go unnoticed spread over a decade, the struggling Rhode Islanders profiled in March by The Washington Post would likely disagree.

Regardless of the magnitude, the rationale behind cutting food aid has never made good sense. The program’s expenditures ebb and flow along with the overall poverty rate itself and remain elevated because economic growth remains too slow nearly four years after the official end of the Great Recession. If Republicans want to greatly reduce SNAP expenditures in a way recipients won’t notice, the answer is economic growth.

Few will even notice major cuts in our nation’s food stamp program, according to Rep. Steve King (R-IA).

Speaking on the floor Tuesday, King argued that a $20 billion cut to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program “spread out over ten years is not something that is going to be noticeable.”

KING: We do calculate our budget and spending in a 10-year window, so that means $800 billion is the universe of money we’re talking about. … Over the time period of 10 years, there would be $20 billion trimmed off of $800 billion. What comes to about a 2.5 percent decrease in the overall projected expenditures of the food stamp program known as SNAP. After all of that technical gibberish, the bottom line is a $20 billion cut is a $2.5 billion cut in the increase. $20 billion spread out over ten years is not something that is going to be noticeable.

Watch it:

Last year, the House Agriculture Committee passed a bill that included $16.5 billion in cuts to food stamps. As a result, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated, 2 to 3 million low-income people would no longer receive food assistance. The legislation touted by King would go even further.

Food stamps are an essential part of the American safety net and keep millions out of poverty. In 2011, SNAP lifted 4.7 million people out of poverty, nearly half of whom were children, despite the fact that most recipients receive less than $1.50 per meal on average.

The House is about to begin debating this year’s farm bill, as House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-OK) has scheduled a mark up on May 15. Ahead of the negotiations, Lucas has already indicated that he is planning steep cuts in spending, mostly focused on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps, reports Capital Press:

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., told Capital Press on April 26 that he is planning a farm bill that will cut $38 billion in spending over 10 years, with $20 billion coming from the food stamps account and $18 billion from the rest of the bill.

Those cuts would be $3 billion more than those included in a farm bill passed by the committee last year.

In fact, the bill passed last year by the committee included $16.5 billion in cuts to SNAP, which was predicted to end benefits for 2 to 3 million people. Lucas’s proposal would cut SNAP even more severely.

Unlike many other social safety net programs, SNAP easily expands and contracts in response to increased need, and therefore has been very responsive to the economic downturn. It is also a crucial tool in fighting poverty: In 2011, the program kept roughly 4.7 million people out of poverty, including 2.1 million children, and cut the number of children living in extreme poverty in half. Food stamps also lead to better health and economic outcomes for beneficiaries. They can reduce food insecurity among high-risk children by 20 percent and improve their health by 35 percent.

Yet the benefits are already meager. The average recipient receives about $133 a month, or about $1.48 a meal. Rather than looking for cuts in the food stamp program, perhaps lawmakers could instead focus on crop subsidies that fuel the junk food industry.

Targeted programs for minorities, new farmers, and the environment have been removed from the U.S. Farm Bill as a consequence of significant, under-reported cuts in the deal to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff.” While the deal extended some key Farm Bill provisions, one of which will prevent milk prices from skyrocketing, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) insisted on cutting these programs as part of the final deal.

Though targeted programs (described as such because they’re “targeted” at helping certain groups of farmers) would have made up only about one percent of the nine-month farm bill extension’s price tag, they make up its most comprehensive and effectual efforts at making American farming sustainable and open to all Americans. Below are three examples of important targeted programs cut at McConnell’s behest:

1. Outreach and Technical Assistance for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers. Because the historical legacy of slavery and discrimination in landowning left the vast majority of American farmland in white hands, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans are dramatically underrepresented in American farming. Moreover, continued discrimination and unequal education means that white farmers disproportionately benefit from USDA support programs. The Outreach and Technical Assistance program, also known as 2501, is the only federal program dedicated to rectifying this discriminatory legacy by funding grants, education initiatives, and outreach organizations designed specifically for minority farmers. Created in 1990, but more robustly funded in both 2002 and 2008, it has been “most effective in reversing the decline of socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers across the United States,” according to Professor Robert Zabawa, an expert on race and farming at Tuskegee University. 2501 is strongly supported by a broad group of organizations around the country, including the AFL-CIO.

2. Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program. The farm bill is larded with favors to big agribusiness. To take just one example, there are no functional caps on subsidy payments, which means that huge corporate farms get roughly a third of the subsidies designed to keep family farmers afloat. This corporate welfare makes it very difficult for new farmers (who are generally smaller and poorer) to make their businesses work. The Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program is the USDA’s attempt to address this problem. Since it was first funded in 2008, the Program has spent roughly $70 million on efforts to give beginning farmers a fighting chance.

3. Rural Energy for America Program. Renewable energy, particularly solar power, provides cheaper and more climate-friendly power to farmers. Indeed, renewable energy use has exploded on American farms in recent years, thanks in part to the Rural Energy for America Program. Created in the 2008 Farm Bill, the program provides loans and grants to farmers looking to power their farm or ranch with clean energy. The initiative has provided roughly $350 million loans and grants since it’s been created, directly resulting in 600,000 rural American homes being powered by renewables in place of CO2-emitting fuels, according to a USDA review.

The deal also cuts three programs aimed at land conservation, compounding an earlier drafting snafu that cut enormous amounts of funding for protecting American land. The Farm Bill’s land conservation efforts are critical bulwarks against water pollution and CO2 emissions from American industrial agriculture.

While temporarily suspending funding for these programs for nine months will damage, but not necessarily cripple, these programs, the bigger concern is whether they’ll make it back into a more permanent five-year extension passed later this year.

House Republicans let the five-year farm bill expire at the end of September without a new law to replace the massive measure covering billions of dollars in programs, including food stamps and agriculture subsidies. The Senate passed its own bipartisan, 10-year farm bill in June, and House Democrats and farm state Republicans attempted to force the House to consider a bill to replace it. But the GOP leadership steadfastly refused to vote on it.

As a result, milk prices could jump as high as $6 to $8 per gallon after Jan. 1, when the government will revert to following antiquated 1949 regulations without a farm bill in place:

Under the current program, the government sets a minimum price to cover dairy farmers’ production costs. If the market price drops below that, the government buys dairy products from farmers to buoy prices and increase demand. Since milk prices have remained above that minimum price in recent years, dairy farmers usually do better by selling their products commercially rather than to the government.

But if 1949 rules go into effect, the government would be required to buy dairy products at around $40 per hundredweight — roughly twice the current market price — to drive up the price of milk to cover dairy producers’ cost.

“It would be bad for consumer demand in the long run,” said Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation, which represents more than 32,000 dairy farmers.

In the short term, farmers would see a windfall by selling to the government at a higher price, but as the New York Times reports, that would lead to higher prices in stores and less milk available for manufacturing butter and cheese. “I don’t think customers and food processors are going to pay double what they are paying now for dairy products,” said Dean Norton, a dairy farmer and president of the New York Farm Bureau.

Members of the House Agriculture Committee say they will go back to work on a new five-year farm bill in the new congressional session.

Within the now-expired farm bill that has been stuck in the House due to Republican obstruction is a program to help support the U.S. sugar industry. If the bill comes up during a lame duck congressional session, then critics of the sugar program want it to be struck from the bill.

Now, candy makers are using Halloween to drum up opposition to the sugar subsidies. In a press release, the Coalition for Sugar Reform called the sugar program “one of the last Depression-era ghosts,” according to The Hill:

The colorful flyer argues that the U.S. sugar program is costing consumers $3.5 billion a year through higher prices and puts 600,000 food processing jobs at risk.

The sugar program supports sugar beet and sugarcane growers by restricting imports of sugar. It also limits the amount of domestic sugar that can be sold as long as imports remain low.

The American Sugar Alliance, which represents farmers, has argued that sugar program does not affect the budget and that removing support for sugar farmers could make the U.S. overly dependent on imports.

“It’s surprising that lobbyists for some of the most profitable food companies in the world have instead focused on scoring cheap political points, putting U.S. farmers out of business, importing more subsidized foreign sugar, and boosting their already bloated profits,” said alliance spokesman Phillip Hayes. Regardless of what the sugar industry says about the subsidies, 46 senators voted to end the sugar program when the Senate considered the farm bill earlier this year — up from 29 in 2001.

The U.S. sugar program props up the nation’s sugar industry through import limitations and tariffs. A 2006 Commerce Department study found that three manufacturing jobs are lost for every one sugar-growing job that is saved through the artificially high sugar prices.

Additionally, the U.S. spends $4.9 billion each year in “direct payment” subsidies to farmers of certain crops. But instead of fulfilling the goal of giving small farmers “income stability,” the subsidies go to high-income owners of select croplands who are already enjoying high commodity prices and profits, according to analysis by the Center for American Progress. If Congress gradually phased out the subsidies, then this funding could be used for deficit reduction as well as farm-based clean energy projects, rural home modernizations, biofuel crop cultivation, and agricultural exports.

In an October 15 debate between North Dakota Senate candidates Republican Rep. Rick Berg and Democratic challenger Heidi Heitkamp, the failure of the House of Representatives to pass a farm bill was a central issue. Heitkamp called the lack of a new farm bill the “biggest failure of this Congress.”

Though the Senate passed a farm bill with a big bipartisan majority, leadership in the Republican-controlled House did not even vote on one before adjourning in September. At the time, Berg told CNN he was “frustrated with the Republican leadership.” In Tuesday’s debate, Rep. Berg reiterated that point, calling House Republican leadership “a problem”:

We have a stonewall problem. I’ll agree. The House Republican leadership is a problem on the farm bill.

Watch it:

Berg claimed Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) promised to bring the bill to the floor before the end of the year. But during an appearance in Iowa yesterday, Boehner “didn’t respond to questions about federal farm provisions that expired this month.”

Since North Dakota is one of the leading agriculture producers in the nation and ranks in the top ten for a variety of agricultural products, it is no surprise the farm bill was a main focus of discussion. The last farm bill expired on September 30, and though it won’t end federal support for farmers in 2012, farm policies will return to standards from 1949 on January 1, 2013 if no new bill is passed. Large swathes of the Department of Agriculture also face defunding.

House Republicans and Democrats from agriculture-heavy districts came together in a rare moment of bipartisanship in late September, trying to get the bill to the floor in spite of House leadership.

– Greg Noth

The 2012 Farm Bill is still languishing in the House, with GOP leadership in the chamber intentionally preventing action on the legislation for political reasons. According to the New York Times, “House leaders declined to take up either [the Senate or the House] version of the legislation. They are not eager to force their members to take a vote that would be difficult for some of them, nor would they wish to pass a measure largely with Democrats’ votes right before an election.”

But without a new five-year Farm Bill or at least a temporary extension of current legislation, the Department of Agriculture may be forced to shutter almost all of its operations.

The Farm Bill serves as a mass funding mechanism for the USDA — it provides funding for roughly 90 percent of the Department’s operations, meaning those operations may have to shut down if the Farm Bill isn’t renewed. According to the National Sustainable Agriculture Commission, the effect of even a temporary shutdown could be long-lasting:

USDA would be forced to occupy a multiple-month holding pattern, temporarily stopping many services and programs. Program administration involves a certain amount of planning and preparation, stakeholder input, rulemaking, and outreach. Even if program opportunities aren’t announced until later in the year, the preparation work that leads up to announcements takes time and certainty. Programs can’t simply be “turned off” and then “turned on” again with the expectation that program delivery and administration will not suffer.

The programs that the NSAC believe would be affected include “all the major programs for beginning and minority farmers, farmers markets, organic agriculture, renewable energy, and rural economic development” and new enrollment in the “the Wetland Reserve, Grassland Reserve, and Conservation Reserve Programs.” USDA programs funded by the Farm Bill are critical to addressing the crippling drought that has spread over four-fifths of the United States. The USDA also takes a lead role in shutting down brutal factory farms and administers the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), a cost-effective food assistance program for needy families.

This isn’t to say that the House bill is necessarily worth passing in its current form — the House version contains, among other things, deep cuts to critical food stamp programs. But failure to pass at least a stopgap necessary to keep USDA could have dangerous consequences.