Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On The Release Of The Rural Prosperity And Food Security Act By Chairwoman Stabenow

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on the unveiling of the 2024 farm bill by Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks which can also be viewed here:

I would like to applaud my good friend and colleague, Chairwoman Stabenow of the Senate Agriculture Committee, who yesterday released the substance of her farm bill.

Chair Stabenow's farm bill supports our farmers, feeds our families, and bolsters our rural communities.

By focusing on bipartisanship rather than playing partisan games with our farmers and families like House Republicans, the bill she put together, the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act, holds together the broad coalition needed to pass a farm bill. I am proud of the Chairwoman's dogged work on this legislation.

The bill includes more than 100 bipartisan priority pieces of legislation, from improving rural healthcare and education, to foreign ownership of farmland.

It ensures that SNAP reflects the realities of how Americans buy and prepare food and keeps kids fed by making significant investments to end childhood hunger. And it defends the historic climate-smart agriculture investments that I fought so hard to secure in the Inflation Reduction Act last Congress. The bill – we all know about 10% of the carbon emitted into the atmosphere comes from agriculture – and the bill does a good job by reducing that amount, but still making sure farmers, particularly small farmers, don't pay the price.

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