The bulk of the Farm Bill is funding for food stamps, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said Thursday during an interview on Breitbart News Daily.
Sen. Johnson walked through some of the issues with the original 1,537-page continuing resolution (CR) negotiated by Speaker Johnson, which is full of pork. One of the stumbling blocks for some is the inclusion of the Farm Bill in the spending deal, but the senator said it is not what it seems.
“I guess, the leverage that is being thrown at us is, “We have to pass this because it has a Farm Bill in it, and it’s like, well, hold on,” host Mike Slater said, asking the senator to explain what that means.
“It’s a food stamp bill,” Johnson revealed. “80 percent of the Farm Bill is funding for food stamps, and Obama dramatically increased eligibility.”
“It used to be in prosperous times, maybe 6 percent of the population was on food stamps. Then [the] recessions, go up to 12 [percent] 13 [percent], pretty well stuck at that higher limit nowadays, because we pay people not to work,” Johnson said.
“Let’s be honest, we pay people not to work,” he said, noting that the U.S. welfare program is very generous.
“People don’t pay taxes on them [welfare benefits]. We have a huge transfer of wealth from working Americans to people who don’t work. And we’re a compassionate society. We want to help people who can’t help themselves. We want to help people help themselves, but we created a far too large dependent class. That’s got to end,” he said. “We need to get people off the couch. They’ve got to enter the workforce and grow our economy.”
Speaking to Breitbart News Daily that same day, Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, also said the Farm Bill has “become largely a food stamp bill.”
“I mean, it is all about passing out the goodies, and therein lies the big concern with the Farm Bill for many of us is that as a result of being able to — the requirements to be able to qualify for food stamps are so loose and states do not enforce them well, so much of the money goes out fraudulently or goes out to people who really shouldn’t be getting the money,” he said.
“That’s the big problem with the Farm Bill. It isn’t so much helping farmers anymore. It’s become a food stamp program,” he added.
“I mean, there’s some good stuff in there for farmers, absolutely. But this is where the Democrats come back and say, ‘We want more money for the Farm Bill,’ because that’s the reason Democrats support the Farm Bill, not because of farmers, but because of food stamps,” Tiffany concluded.
