House Republicans have failed Negotiating 101, and taxpayers will suffer.
The GOP is on the verge of helping Democrats expand America’s already-out-of-control food-stamp program — formally the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — by an astounding $70 billion, at least, over the next decade.
That’s the reality of the House’s proposal for the so-called “Farm Bill,” which is almost entirely filled with food-stamp giveaways.
Republicans should have aggressively fought to protect taxpayers and promote work, but they tried to placate Democrats before the bargaining began.
Republicans are missing an enormous opportunity.
Under President Biden, food-stamp spending has ballooned to more than $110 billion per year — nearly double the cost of five years ago.
A staggering 41.2 million people are on the program, up 4.4 million people in the past four years.
Republicans — who claim to be the party of work over welfare — should have made reform a top priority.
They could have stood strong, like they did last year during the debt-ceiling negotiations, helping to secure modest improvements to work requirements.
But this time around, the GOP has already walked most of the way toward the Democrats’ position, even expanding food stamps for liberal constituencies.
The GOP has agreed to let convicted drug dealers obtain SNAP benefits, repealing a policy from the 1996 welfare reform that then-Sen. Joe Biden voted for, but Democrats now hate.
The left views the restriction as part of the “war on drugs,” but this giveaway to felons will cost up to $6.3 billion over the next decade.
The GOP also agreed to let prisoners receive food stamps before release, making it more likely that the more than 600,000 people who leave prison each year will end up in dependency.
Democrats also want more college students to get food stamps, and Republicans obliged.
They agreed to push states to sign up eligible students — and if all do, the cost will be $55 billion over a decade.
Republicans have also agreed to repeal the requirement that states verify food-stamp recipients with a federal hiring database, something Democrats say is too hard.
The result will be more fraud.
And Republicans even exempted the earnings of refugees and asylees who participate in employment programs.
That will only exacerbate America’s border crisis, even as it boosts welfare spending.
What did Republicans give themselves after pre-emptively giving so much to Democrats?
Some modest anti-fraud measures and a prohibition on a future presidential administration unilaterally increasing food-stamp benefits — something President Biden did in 2021, at a cost to taxpayers of $250 billion.
Yet even that victory is less than meets the eye: Republicans should have fought to repeal the president’s welfare expansion altogether, not merely prevent him from doing it again.
They didn’t even try to boost work requirements on able-bodied adults or limit the waivers that states use to avoid the work requirements that exist.
Republicans are now negotiating from a position of weakness.
And guess what? Democrats are already demanding more.
When the bill came up in the House Agriculture Committee last month, almost every Democrat voted against it, even though it’s already a win for them.
Rep. David Scott, the ranking member, is calling it “the largest cut to SNAP in 30 years.”
Democrats, at least, realize that in negotiations, you oppose the other side’s first offer to get more in the final version.
Meanwhile, on the Senate side, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D.-Mich.) has already introduced a farm bill that gives Democrats everything they want, instead of just most of it.
If the House and Senate both pass their versions — which could happen this summer — the final bill will be even worse for taxpayers.
But it shouldn’t get that far.
House Republicans should realize their mistake, vote down their own bill in the coming weeks and start over.
They should rally around real reforms — the kind that will save taxpayers money and move millions of people from welfare to work.
The Democrats’ attacks will be vicious no matter what, so House Republicans should pass the most aggressive bill possible before the summer is out.
Taxpayers need Republicans to learn how to negotiate, and fast.
Jonathan Ingram is Vice President of Policy and Research at the Foundation for Government Accountability.
