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With help from Meredith Lee Hill

— A House Appropriations proposal would reduce food assistance to pregnant women, new mothers and children more than the top line suggests. MA has the numbers.

— President Joe Biden vowed to not accept any cuts to food assistance in the debt limit talks. He returns to Washington, and fraught negotiations, today.

— Meredith caught up with Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer , a first-term Republican from Oregon who sits on the House Ag Committee.

HAPPY MONDAY, MAY 22. Welcome to Morning Ag. I’m your host, Garrett Downs. As always, send tips to [email protected] and @_garrettdowns, and follow us at @Morning_Ag.

GOING DEEPER ON APPROPS: The House GOP’s proposal to fund the government through fiscal 2024 would take a razor to the Agriculture Department budget. The bill would hit the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children especially hard.

The plan is likely dead on arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. But Republicans have a stronger hand than they’ve had in previous years, now that they control the House.

Between the lines: The GOP plan would fund WIC at $6 billion, the same amount as last year. The figure is $300 million less than the president’s budget called for.

However, the plan would slash funding for the program in other areas.

It would rescind $500 million in unspent funds for the program, bringing the total cut from President Joe Biden’s budget to $800 million.

Benefit bump nix: It would also cut the cash voucher for WIC recipients, known as the fruit and vegetable benefit. The program received a benefit bump and monthly vouchers for child recipients are now $25, $44 for pregnant and postpartum recipients and $49 for partially or fully breastfeeding participants.

If enacted, the GOP bill would end the benefit bump. Child recipients would receive $11, pregnant and postpartum women would receive $13 and fully and partially breastfeeding women would receive $15.

Why it matters: The benefit bump significantly increased fruit and vegetable sales and consumption, according to Mollie Van Lieu, the vice president of nutrition and health at the International Fresh Produce Association. Cutting it will “harm children and families,” she said.

“Recent CDC data shows that almost half of American children do not consume a daily vegetable,” Van Lieu said. “Yet, the WIC program, which targets our nation’s most vulnerable children, has been a success story with participating children consuming more than two cups of fruits and vegetables per day. Any shopper can tell you $11 is not enough to access a month’s worth of fruits and vegetables.”

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BIDEN VOWS TO PROTECT SNAP: President Joe Biden on Sunday vowed to protect food assistance for nearly “1 million Americans” as talks to raise the debt ceiling stalled.

“I’m not going to agree to a deal that protects wealthy tax cheats and crypto traders while putting food assistance at risk for nearly 1 million Americans,” he said during a news conference in Japan to close the G-7 Summit.

It comes as GOP negotiators ratcheted up their demands around SNAP, now asking for new restrictions on states’ ability to request work requirement waivers from the federal government — a holy grail for Republicans.

Context: House Republicans proposed vast expansions to work requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in their legislation to raise the debt ceiling. Specifically, Republicans proposed raising the age threshold for so-called able-bodied adults without dependents in the SNAP program, who have to meet more strenuous work requirements than general recipients, and prohibiting states from rolling over unused waivers into the next year.

More broadly, they are using the debt ceiling as leverage to squeeze Biden and vulnerable Senate Democrats into agreeing to deep cuts to the welfare programs and extract partisan policy victories.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen reiterated on Sunday that the U.S. will hit its borrowing limit in early June, potentially by the 1st, pushing the country into default.

Why it matters: As Meredith reported last week, the White House has expressed willingness to expand work requirements on TANF, an emergency cash assistance program. But Biden has continued to resist making SNAP more difficult to access. Liberal Democrats would likely erupt over any cuts to the welfare programs.

Getting Biden to agree to expanded work requirements on any welfare programs would represent a major victory for Republicans. SNAP work requirement expansions are a perennial GOP goal in the farm bill, due to be reauthorized this year. But Democrats, who control the Senate, would likely strip out any provision to do so.

Anti-hunger groups widely condemn enhancing work requirements, which they say do not increase employment as Republicans claim.

“Work requirements are punitive and ineffective. They perpetuate the myth that people on economic assistance programs choose not to work when the evidence clearly shows otherwise, and by taking vital support away from SNAP participants, they actually make it harder to secure and maintain employment,” said Eric Mitchell, the executive director of the Alliance to End Hunger, a coalition that includes retail giants Amazon, Walmart and food giant Cargill.

“Staving off a national default is essential, but it would be unconscionable to achieve that goal by taking vital economic and health support away from people in dire straits,” he said.

MEET THE MAJORITY: House Ag Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Ore.), who grew up in a small farming community, told MA she’s looking forward to being on a committee that people are expecting to “be solid,” ahead of the major farm bill reauthorization process this year.

Crop insurance: Chavez-DeRemer highlighted crop insurance, especially expanding coverage for the wide range of specialty crops in her state, as one of her top farm bill priorities.

Rural child care: The first-term Republican also said she wants to work with USDA to expand child care access in rural areas.

“We have a lot of small farmers in the state of Oregon, and a lot of them are women farmers,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “And when we’re talking about child care, we know that really across any industry, it’s hard to find childcare. In cities, it’s even harder in the rural areas. And what does that look like?”

SNAP: Chavez-DeRemer said she also wants to promote choice within SNAP and ensure the program is serving “the people who qualify.” She’s a co-sponsor on Rep. Dusty Johnson’s bill to create new SNAP work requirements that stoked severe backlash among anti-hunger advocates and House Democrats.

“I want to incentivize people to go back to work, I think that that’s important,” she said. The current GOP work requirement expansion demands in the debt limit talks don’t go as far as Johnson’s bill. MA asked Chavez-DeRemer if she would support Republicans going further on work requirements for SNAP in the farm bill.

“I think there’s a conversation,” she replied. “But I think the goal is — it’s really about growing the workforce. But at the same time, I want to protect the most vulnerable.”

Ag workforce: MA asked Chavez-DeRemer about the chances for any farm workforce and immigration reform this Congress — which appear slim to none.

She noted producers “are begging us to do something on immigration. We have to be paying attention to this.”

“We all ran on border security,” she added. “But we also know that we need a fix to the immigration sector as it relates to agriculture specifically.”

— Arizona farmers are running out of water, forcing farmers to confront climate change, NPR’s Ximena Bustillo reports.

— Texas’ Senate bill 147 is among those that died in the state House this weekend. Similar to other proposals across the country, the bill would have limited farmland sales to China and other countries that pose “a risk to the national security of the United States.” A watered-down version failed to get a vote in committee and expired, reports the Texas Tribune.

— Clergy in the heartland are training to prevent agricultural worker suicides, the Associated Press reports.

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