WASHINGTON — Lawmakers, as they work on the 2023 farm bill, are staking out positions on nutrition and food stamps — the Agriculture Department’s biggest single program and a perennial source of contention.
The draft bill may still be months away, but Republican members of Congress have already said they want to toughen eligibility rules for some recipients, revisit the benefits they provide and provide more flexibility to accommodate indigenous groups’ traditional foods. Those decisions are likely to have a ripple effect on school nutrition programs that aren’t part of the farm bill but aid low-income families that qualify for food stamps.
Now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the food stamp program feeds about 42.5 million people, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated it will cost about $127 billion in fiscal 2023, down about $21 billion from fiscal 2022.
