Representative Tom Cotton (R) would like to assure the residents of Arkansas that the only reason he voted against the farm bill is because President Obama made him do it.
COTTON: When President Obama hijacked the farm bill and turned it into a food stamp bill, with billions more in spending, I voted no. Career politicians love attaching bad ideas to good ones. Then the bad ideas become law and you pay for it.
I’m Tom Cotton. I approve this message. I think you paid enough already.
If you have even a cursory understanding of the agricultural industry, you’re probably aware that food stamps have been included in the farm bill for decades, long before Tom Cotton even graduated from high school.
Spending on subsidies and food stamps filters down from the government to the farm and on to supermarkets where farmed goods are sold. Every one dollar spent on food stamps translates to more than one dollar in economic activity. Spending on subsidies and food stamps inevitably lines the pockets of rural conservative farmers who vote Republican even though they’re against food stamps.
Tom Cotton wants those rural conservative voters to know that he only voted against their subsidies because Obama.
The ironic thing is the farm bill that ultimately passed and was signed into law contained fewer cuts to food stamps than the bill Tom Cotton initially voted against. And why didn’t the final bill contain as many cuts as the original bill? Because House Republicans did not have enough the votes to pass their own bill without Democratic support.
The final bill reduced spending on food stamps. It did not add “billions more in spending” as Cotton alleges.