WASHINGTON, D.C. — A potential new farm bill could be delayed—again—over nutrition assistance and farm safety net programs.

The farm bill has historically enjoyed bipartisan support, but Democrats in the Senate said they would not accept a Republican version of the bill moving through the House that would limit spending on nutrition assistance programs and provide more funding to large-scale commodity farmers.

The bill, a sweeping package of legislation to set policy and funding levels for farm, food and conservation programs, is usually renewed every five years and was up for reauthorization in September 2023. However, as lawmakers were preoccupied with avoiding a government shutdown and passing a foreign aid package through the fall, they instead extended the 2018 bill another year.

The GOP bill would reduce funding on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), cutting $30 billion worth of nutrition program funding over 10 years. Republicans pointed to the ballooning costs under the current calculation for nutrition programs, which the Congressional Budget Office projects would cost $1.51 trillion over the next 10 years. The previous farm was estimated to cost $867 billion over 10 years.

Democrats want the opposite: to maintain the current SNAP funding and to set up crop and farm insurance programs to benefit both small and large farms.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., said she would rather see another extension of the legislation, which expires Sept. 30, than pass a “bad bill.”

“The House bill's very skewed to the largest farms,” Stabenow said during an interview during One Country Project’s Rural Progress Summit. “If you do what you're talking about and have only a few, I'm not sure they can pass a farm bill.”

House Agriculture Committee member Max Miller, R-Ohio, said Stabenow’s comments were a stalling tactic to keep current food stamp levels in place, to the detriment of farmers.

An updated bill is urgently needed, Miller said. Since the last farm bill was passed in 2018, global events like the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine have changed the global market and raised costs associated with farming.

Democrats blamed Republicans for delaying the process.

“The farm bill needs to come to the floor in a way that will pass. And they know that and it’s not going to pass with deep cuts, not just to low income families, but to local economies. This would be a huge hit to local grocery stores,” said Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio.

With little progress and the upcoming fall deadline, another one-year extension is looking increasingly likely.

Stabenow, though, still said a new deal could potentially be reached. She said one wasn’t likely before the November election, but perhaps by the end of the year.