House passes contentious Farm Bill

Washington — House Republicans on July 11 passed a Farm Bill that would end direct subsidy payments to farmers, replacing those payments with a federally subsidized crop insurance program. The House bill diverged dramatically from the Senate bill passed in June, however, by cutting funding for food stamps entirely, with House Republicans promising instead to take up the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in a separate bill. The measure passed with a 216 to 208 vote, with no House Democrats supporting it and 12 Republicans also voting against it. The House bill also makes cuts to conservation programs while proposing radical changes to federal agricultural policy by making some commodity subsidies permanent instead of expiring every five years. While some supporters lauded the House measure as a “farm only” bill that cuts wasteful spending on food stamps and renewable energy, the legislation had far more detractors, with pointed criticism coming from both the Left and Right. The conservative magazine The Weekly Standard labeled it a “fiasco,” saying the bill “gets almost everything wrong” by “outspending both the Democratic Senate and the profligate Obama White House” with “tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to agribusiness interests.” Politico summed up its opinion of the bill with a simple four-word headline: “Worst. Farm bill. Ever.” House Republicans were also criticized for tactics used to bring the bill to the floor, including adopting an “emergency” rule in a late-night session before the July 11 vote that governed debate on the bill and closed it off to any amendments, and introducing the 608-page legislative text to other House members just 10 hours before the vote was called. Conference committees will now go to work on reconciling the House and Senate bills, but lawmakers face an uphill battle. The Senate’s version of the bill, passed on June 10, would reauthorize many of the nation’s food and agricultural programs while reducing spending by roughly $24 billion over 10 years through cuts to farm subsidies, reduced food stamp funding, and consolidating conservation programs (GM June 17, p. 11).