For decades, the farm bill has been a beacon of bipartisanship. The dysfunctional House

Someone in House leadership screwed up again.

The defeat of the farm bill — after both parties were privately bullish it would pass with large margins — shows, once again, how massively dysfunctional the House and its leadership has become. And it plainly reveals that a bipartisan rewrite of the nation’s complex and politically charged immigration laws are a pipe dream in the House, at least for now. Preventing a government shutdown and debt limit fight are not far behind.


For decades, the farm bill has been a beacon of bipartisanship in an increasingly rough-and-tumble chamber. The defeat of Thursday’s version was propelled by the adoption of Florida GOP Rep. Steve Southerland’s amendment to institute work requirements for recipients of food stamps. Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) spoke on behalf of the amendment, indicating his support.

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But passage of that amendment doomed the broader bill. Thursday’s episode illustrates in real time that Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) standard for passing immigration reform will be a massive challenge. Bipartisanship is a process fraught with pitfalls in the House, and leaders in both parties can’t rally their troops to follow them, as 62 Republicans joined 172 Democrats to vote against the bill. Republicans had 171 of their members voting ‘yes,’ and Democrats had 24 in favor.

People involved in the farm debate, irate at the sudden defeat, say the House is plainly not working. Someone’s vote count was off. Someone’s political antennae were frayed. Someone miscalculated the stiff resistance from the rank and file.

Republicans are sniping that Democrats promised 40 votes — but, given the final vote count, even that wouldn’t have put the bill over the edge.

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At the center of this battle were some of the biggest House players, the same people who will be necessary to pass immigration reform: Boehner, Cantor, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) Agriculture Committee Chair Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

In the bill’s rapid descent, most of these leaders experienced some level of defeat . Boehner said he would cast a vote for the bill, despite reservations — a bid to urge his colleagues to swallow hard and support the legislation. That personal appeal didn’t work — his colleagues turned their backs on him.

Cantor, who is next in line for the speakership, did not accept any blame for the bill’s defeat on the House floor, which he controls.

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“All I want to say is, I’m extremely disappointed in Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership to choose, really, partisanship over progress,” Cantor said, in a rare impromptu media availability. “This has always been a bipartisan effort, we were always aware that the reform amendment that Mr. Southerland was bringing forward was going to be offered. But I’ll tell you, it’s just disappointing that we have seen now the Democrats putting partisanship over progress.”

It’s never good for a whip to lose on the floor — although McCarthy and his aides say that their count was right on target, and they could’ve flipped more lawmakers if the vote was close.

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Republicans blamed Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), the 22-year veteran of Congress who serves as his party’s top lawmaker on the Agriculture Committee, who saw Democrats dash from supporting his bill. Lucas has egg on his face because he spent months crafting a bill that went down in flames in a very public way.

“They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory,” an irate Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told POLITICO. “They had a bipartisan agreement, Peterson was on board. I think they would gotten a very substantial number of Democratic votes. They had a substantial number of amendments that turned it into a partisan bill.”

Pelosi is, once again, the object of Republican scorn, and being branded as a figure that the GOP simply can’t trust. She said the GOP majority is “amateur hour.”

Here’s how the players tell the story. Southerland, a Florida Republican in leadership, was always planning to offer this amendment. Peterson said he told Lucas “for the last two days not to accept that amendment. Oppose it.” GOP leadership aides counter that Peterson, who was whipping Democrats, knew about the amendment, and privately still told Republicans that 40 Democrats would vote for the bill.

“It might’ve been well known on their side, but it wasn’t well known,” Peterson said. “The timing was terrible. And I told Eric that. Our people didn’t know this was coming. I told Lucas [to] be careful with this one, because they’ve about had it. And when that came up at the last deal, that’s — I had a bunch of people come up to me and say, ‘I was with you, but this is it. I’m done.’

After that, he said he told Cantor he’s “tired of this.”

“I said, ‘My opinion is: Put this bill up. Let’s vote her up or down,’” Peterson later recalled to reporters.

The blame, this time around, is incredibly pointed, and personal. Rory Cooper, an aide to Cantor, said Democrats can’t govern — despite the fact that Republicans have a 33-seat House majority.

GOP aides called Pelosi and Peterson out by name.

“House Democrats promised 40 votes on final passage of FARRM,” McCarthy aides said Thursday afternoon. “This afternoon, ranking member Peterson alerted Chairman Lucas at the very last minute that he could not produce what he promised under pressure from both the White House and House Democratic leadership. Republicans delivered the exact number of votes we had promised, per our very accurate whip count. Today, good faith bipartisanship is trumped by bad faith politics.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) reacted this way: “It’s time for Speaker Boehner to take the same approach that has proven successful in the past, and allow the House to pass the bipartisan work of the Senate.”

Peterson was asked what people should read from this defeat.

“That we can’t get our act together — the House of Representatives,” he told reporters in the Capitol after the bill went down.

— John Bresnahan contributed to this report