MSNOW: Democrat confronts Trump agriculture secretary on ‘totally screwed over’ farmers

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sparred with House Democrats on Thursday over the Trump administration’s deep cuts to federal funding for nutrition assistance programs and the Iran war’s economic squeeze on American farmers, at one point calling a lawmaker “rude.”

The $187 billion in cuts President Donald Trump’s marquee legislation made across the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a federal food aid program for low-income families, dominated Rollins’ fiery exchanges with lawmakers as her testimony before the House Agriculture Committee got underway.

“You and this administration have failed farmers and working Americans time after time after time,” Rep. Angie Craig, the top Democrat on the Agriculture Committee, said in her opening statement. “You’ve also made the largest cut to food assistance in the history of our country, at a time when more and more people are struggling to afford their food.”

Since Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act was enacted last July, about 3.5 million SNAP recipients have lost their benefits, according to the latest figures from the Department of Agriculture. The bill imposed stricter eligibility requirements on participants and shifted the majority of the cost responsibilities for administering the program onto the states.

Rollins argued that the cost changes to the program, which will be determined by states’ payment error rates — a measure of underpayments or overpayments of SNAP benefits to recipients — are a way to reduce “fraud” in the program.

But Craig and the committee’s Democrats challenged that argument, pointing out that the department she heads does not consider payment errors a fraud indicator.

“I don’t think you understand the difference between an error rate and a fraud rate. I honestly don’t. It is one of the lowest programs — the lowest fraud rate in any program in America is the SNAP program,” Craig said after Rollins condemned Democrat-led states for rejecting her department’s request for their program data, which she said is necessary to “root out fraud.”

“You can’t be serious,” Rollins responded.

Under the act, states will be required take on between 5% and 15% of the cost of SNAP funding by the beginning of fiscal year 2028.

The percentage that states will need to pay will be decided by their payment error rates from the current fiscal year, which ends in October. That has started a race as states try reconcile their payment errors, often caused by unintentional administrative mistakes, to reduce the cost burden of the program before it’s locked in.

“For many states it will be $100 million or more per year, and states have to balance their budgets, so if they can’t cover those costs by raising taxes or cutting other services, then they’ll need to further restrict access to SNAP and cut enrollment, or they may potentially even withdraw from the program entirely,” said Katie Bergh, a food assistance policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research institute.

The hearing also focused on one of the victims of the Iran war: American farmers. The enduring closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent the price of critical inputs, such as fertilizer and diesel fuel, soaring at a time when row croppers are already squeezed by the loss of key export markets among Trump’s aggressive trade war with China.

“I have to be honest with you, I wish that you would take the time to talk with farmers in my district who have been totally screwed over by this administration. They are livid, they are mad, they are pissed off,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said.

“My farmers can’t afford fertilizer; it’s at record highs because of your administration,” he said. “They can’t afford diesel because of this president’s reckless, illegal war. They can’t afford farm equipment — it’s more expensive than ever because of the stupid tariffs.”

In one tense exchange, Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, raised the issue of Trump’s defense of Chinese ownership of U.S. farms. Rollins interrupted her, saying, “There is no reason to be rude.” Brown responded to the interruption with frustration, saying, “This is my time.”

A host of key compounds used to make fertilizers, like phosphate, ammonia, sulfur and liquified natural gas, are sitting on container ships at the mouth of the strait, unable to move. The cost for key nitrogen fertilizer, which row croppers rely on to produce a viable yield, has jumped significantly since the war began.

Rollins argued the Trump administration’s fast-walking of the permitting process for a $4 billion low-carbon ammonia plant in Louisiana would “onshore” fertilizer prices and help to bring down costs.

But construction on the plant won’t be done until 2029.

“The plant is still years from coming online, so it really has no bearing on prices over the next few growing seasons,” said Shawn Arita, the associate director of the Agricultural Risk Policy Center at North Dakota State University. “The pressures farmers are feeling now are being driven by things like natural gas costs, export policy in major producing countries, and the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, and those will play out well before a new plant like this is producing.”