The 204-195 vote underscores the deep divide in the House on ths issue. | REUTERS Dem food-stamp effort fails

House Republicans only narrowly beat back a Democratic motion Saturday that sought to reassert the old agriculture and food aid alliance in upcoming talks with the Senate over a new Farm Bill.

The 204-195 vote underscores the deep divide in the House over Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s strategy this past summer of stripping out and then rewriting the nutrition title of the five-year farm bill.


Indeed, Saturday’s margin would have been smaller still but for the fact that the GOP leadership peeled back several Republicans who had initially supported the motion. As it was, nine Republicans voted with the Democrats. At one stage in the electronic vote, the number was 12.

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Going forward now in the talks with the Senate, the farm and nutrition titles will be treated as one bill again. But the internal time lines remain in the House version so that the food stamps’ reauthorization runs out in three years while commodity programs run for five.

By breaking up the old alliance, critics of the food stamp program hope to gain leverage in the future. The Democratic motion sought to instruct conferees to move toward the Senate and keep the two sets of issues linked.

“The farm bill’s nutrition program needs to be on the same time line as the bill’s other provisions,” said Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. “It makes no sense to decouple farm and food programs; they go hand in hand.

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“I worry that separating the two of them sets us on a path to no farm bill in the future,” Peterson said. “The Senate farm bill preserves the partnership between farm and food programs, and we should defer to that approach.”

Sounding the same theme, Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), who will be part of the farm bill talks and chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, told the House, “Farming and feeding go hand in hand, and a comprehensive farm bill recognizes this connection. We can restore this connection by ensuring a five-year reauthorization for all programs that come under the farm bill.”

In opposing the motion, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) sounded less like a man convinced of his position than a chairman looking for options in the talks ahead.

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“From my own perspective,” Lucas said, “I would ask the House to allow the conference committee as much flexibility as possible in negotiating with the other body. As much flexibility as possible and that would require rejecting the motion to instruct.”

Immediately after the vote, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) released the names of House conferees. Having waiting so long for this moment, Lucas will move quickly to those talks.

“There are challenging issues yet to overcome, but we have a solid team of negotiators in place,” he said in a statement later. “I am confident we can reach consensus and send a five-year farm bill to the president.”

But Peterson added a cautionary note that much depends still on whether the GOP leadership, including Cantor, will step back more and let Lucas and other Republican negotiators to do their jobs without more interference.

“I am hopeful that if Republican Leadership can be reasonable and leave the conference committee alone to do its work that we will be able to finish a five-year, comprehensive farm bill this year,” Peterson said.