House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.) told Bloomberg Government on Oct. 27 that he remains optimistic that a new farm bill will be negotiated this year.
Thompson said newly minted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pledged in the run-up to the leadership vote this week to bring the full farm reauthorization to the floor this year. Thompson also spent the last three weeks of a leaderless House laying the groundwork for a five-year bill in meetings with multiple House Democrats, including ranking Democrat David Scott (Ga.).
The new speaker is “very supportive of agriculture,” Thompson said, adding that Johnson “campaigned on and identified the farm bill” as must-pass legislation in December.
There remain significant obstacles to that year-end timeline, including deep divisions between the parties over conservation funding and a Republican push to reclaim billions of dollars for climate-related funding from the 2022 climate law.
Thompson also noted that there is still a need for a short-term extension given the current farm bill expired Sept. 30, but he said this extension “should be clean” and avoid substantive changes to the current farm bill, leaving those debates to the five-year bill.
In the Senate, however, Bloomberg Government reported that many Republicans are more focused on moving a one-year extension of the current farm bill, with few signs of progress on a bigger farm bill. And momentum is building for using the spending bill that must be passed next month to avert a government shutdown to carry it.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D), who serves on both the Senate agriculture committee and Republican leadership team, said a farm bill extension could be included in a supplemental spending measure to aid Israel and Ukraine, as well as in several upcoming “minibus” spending bills to fund agencies for fiscal 2024.
Key Senate voices including the agriculture committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), last week said it is time to abandon hopes of getting a five-year farm bill this year and move instead on a one-year extension.
House Democrats haven’t made a decision to back an extension and remain hopeful of moving a bipartisan farm bill, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) told reporters on Oct. 27. House Republicans “continue to play ideological games” as some tout deep cuts in the next farm bill, Jeffries said, but “at the end of the day, there’s no circumstance where any meaningful piece of legislation is moving through the House of Representatives unless it is bipartisan.”