Congress passed a temporary spending bill on Jan. 18 to avert a partial US government shutdown, sending the legislation to the White House, where President Joe Biden plans to sign it. The interim measure would finance some US agencies that were set to run out of money after Jan. 19, with some financed through March 1 and others through March 8.
The House voted 314 to 108 to pass the short-term funding bill just hours after the Senate approved it. Nearly half of House Republicans voted against the measure while Democrats overwhelmingly supported it. The short-term package is meant to give lawmakers time to complete negotiations on annual funding for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
Six weeks of funding to March 1 may not be enough time to work out remaining differences, however. The House is scheduled to be on break for three of those weeks, raising prospects for yet another short-term spending bill.
If the government is operating under interim funding on April 30, automatic across-the-board spending cuts would be triggered under provisions in last June’s debt ceiling compromise. That threat could spur lawmakers to finally settle 2024 spending.
In the meantime, wrangling over government spending bills and the challenge of moving big legislation in an election year are major hurdles for getting a five-year, $1.5 trillion farm bill across the finish line in 2024, according to a report by Bloomberg Law.
Big industry groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, want House and Senate Agriculture Committees to start focusing on the farm bill once the two chambers actually finalize government funding.
After that, Congress should “move on to other things like the farm bill,” said Joby Young, Farm Bureau Executive Vice President. “I would hope those gears would start to move in a couple of months, toward the end of this quarter,” he said.
Much of the timing hinges on congressional leadership committing floor time for the reauthorization, which will likely be “closely sequenced” to follow committee action, Young said.
Top Senate Ag Committee Republican John Boozman (Ark.) said panel members are debating how to carve up the record $1.51 trillion spending for the bill. Members are now “putting stuff on paper,” he said, essentially outlining priorities that would be “the first step before sitting down and really ironing out differences.”
Boozman conceded there is a narrower window in an election year for passing big legislation, but said members traditionally want wins to tout to voters before election day. “This is something they can take home and can talk to their constituencies about how they got it done,” he said.
Cory Booker (D-N.J.), a Senate agriculture panel member, echoed that view. “There are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle that need a bipartisan farm bill” to show “they have ushered in really impactful bills” for their states, he said. For many states, agriculture is among their top five industries, Booker said.
There is a fallback position if backers fail to get a five-year bill this year, and that is another one-year extension. Farm programs slated to expire last year were already extended one year through Sept. 30 under a continuing resolution (H.R. 6363) passed in November (GM Nov. 17, 2023).
Boozman said it is too early to talk about “what-ifs” such as resorting to another extension, and said he is more concerned with getting a five-year bill done in the months between now and the 2024 election, after which prospects for passage dim in a lame-duck session.
One senior House Ag Committee Democrat said there is plenty of reason to be skeptical, citing GOP infighting in the Republican-controlled House, an influx of new Republicans since the 2018 farm bill, and the lack of significant bills passed in the House last year.
“The people who seem to be directly calling the shots are people on the extreme right, who, by the way, most of them have never voted for a farm bill,” said Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.).
Republicans could try to ram through a partisan farm bill that would have little hope of being conferenced with a bill by the Democrat-controlled Senate, he said. That could force farm bill backers to once again opt for the short-term solution. “There may have to be another extension,” McGovern said.