(The Center Square) – The U.S. Farm Bill, advancing with $300 billion in food aid cuts, is facing pushback as an Illinois congressman warns veterans could go hungry. A state legislator urges a focus on mental health instead.
Illinois U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Rockford, asked on social media, “How could anyone vote against a bill that ensures our veterans have food to eat?”
“It’s not a rule in Congress that members of Congress have to go and do anything for veterans. But there are a lot of folks that put on campaign ads that talk about how they support veterans but do they do anything,” Sorensen said in committee during debate on the measure. “For many veterans who have served our country it’s the only meal that they get in that one day.”
Illinois state Rep. David Friess, R-Red Bud, is also a veteran. He said he thinks that most of the federal funding for veterans should be put into mental health services.
“Not that vets don’t go to that [food assistance] facility and they may be fed at that facility, but I think that really is a distraction from what veterans really need. If they’re homeless and they’re going without food, it’s because they have PTSD, they’ve done and engaged and saw things that are extremely traumatic,” Friess told The Center Square.
Illinois U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield, told Brownfield Ag News late last month that many Democrats voted against the draft of last year’s Farm Bill because it included potential cuts, even though those cuts were much smaller.
Budzinski and Sorensen voted for an amendment introduced by U.S. House agriculture committee Democrats. All the Republican members of the committee voted, “no.”
“Have you talked to veterans who get one meal a day? How could anyone be against this amendment? Especially if anybody is going to run an ad to say they support our veterans,” said Sorensen. “Let be clear, this is exactly what this amendment says: ‘this bill will not result in reduced participation for veterans or surviving spouses or children of service members or veterans who die during active service or due to service-related disability.’”
Proponents of the cuts argue that they target specific programs tied to the Inflation Reduction Act, such as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which allocated $27 billion in subsidies to corporate agribusinesses.
The fund aims to boost public and private investment in clean energy and climate projects, including those benefiting agricultural producers.
Friess expressed support for agriculture but acknowledged that it has become a large industry. He explained that programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are valuable but suffer from fraud and abuse, much like other federal programs.
“Just because you have a cut in a program doesn’t mean that the veterans within that program, if they are getting some assistance, are going to be negatively impacted by it,” said Friess. “It’s really frustrating that we have accepted this big, bloated bureaucracy to try and administer these programs.”
