The five-year legislation largely continues current farm and nutrition policy and is projected to cost $867 billion over a decade. | Scott Olson/Getty Images Agriculture Farm bill headed to Trump after landslide House approval

The House on Wednesday easily passed the compromise farm bill by a vote of 369-47, sending the sweeping agriculture and nutrition measure to President Donald Trump to sign.

"I have all the confidence in the world he’ll sign it," House Agriculture Chairman Mike Conaway (R-Texas) said before the vote.


The overwhelming bipartisan vote for the bill caps an eight-month fight over the legislation, marking a quick turnaround for House and Senate negotiators who were deadlocked in efforts to resolve a dispute over food stamps as recently as a few weeks ago.

House Republicans had sought to impose stricter work requirements on millions of food stamp recipients, a priority for House Speaker Paul Ryan and conservatives that Trump had embraced. But Democrats unanimously opposed the House plan, and Senate leaders also rejected it because overhauling the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — formerly known as food stamps — could not clear the 60-vote threshold required in the Senate.

The compromise bill, H.R. 2, released late Monday night and approved overwhelmingly by the Senate on Tuesday, was stripped of every controversial House GOP proposal on SNAP, thwarting Ryan's quest to secure a portion of his welfare-reform agenda.

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Democrats were clearly eager to approve the final deal. The vote included just three Democrats who voted against the bill: Ron Kind (D-Wis.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas).

"After a rocky start, I’m just proud to turn a partisan bill into a bipartisan bill," said House Agriculture ranking member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), who led Democrats in opposing the original House measure earlier this year. "That’s the way Congress is supposed to work."

Conaway, who was at odds with Peterson during much of the standoff over food stamps, commended the Democrat for delivering votes. “Collin and his team delivered across the board,” the House Agriculture chairman said. “Team effort. Both parties, both sides, I think, are happy with it.”

The five-year legislation largely continues current farm and nutrition policy and is projected to cost $867 billion over a decade. Trump must sign it into law before the end of the month. Conaway said after the vote that he believes Trump will sign the measure next week.

Despite the bipartisan ending the vote provided, the farm bill process this year was far from traditional. Congress tries to reauthorize the farm bill every five years, but the historically bipartisan process has become more contentious in recent cycles as conservatives have targeted the food-stamp program for deep cuts.

The House GOP proposals on food stamps that were scrapped would have led to about 1.5 million people being dropped from the program, according to Congressional Budget Office projections. The program, which helps nearly 40 million low-income Americans buy groceries each month, costs about $70 billion per year and accounts for more than three-quarters of total farm bill spending.

The final bill doesn’t alter SNAP benefits or change eligibility for the program in any significant way.

Conservatives complained that Republicans got steamrolled in the compromise and were given a bill that lacks any major GOP priorities — a bitter outcome considering Republicans control the House, the Senate and the White House.

“There is not a single significant conservative win to be found in the entire 800-page monstrosity,” said Caroline Kitchens of R Street Institute, one of several conservative groups that gathered Tuesday to speak out against the final package.

House Republicans, who passed their original bill in June by just two votes after the bill had failed a month earlier, lost leverage in negotiations after the midterm elections. With Democrats set to take control of the House next month, Republicans had to fold on SNAP if they wanted to get a bill done.

“Well, we lost the House of Representatives in November,” Conaway said before the vote, when asked why he made concessions on food stamps. “That was the final nail on the coffin in terms of leverage that I got.”

House Republicans did score some wins on SNAP, but they were minor compared with what they had sought. The final bill improves how states administer the program in an effort to cut down on inaccurate payments; it slightly increases funding for SNAP work-training programs and mandates that states give SNAP recipients more support when they enroll in such programs.

The final bill also didn’t include Senate language that would have blocked the Trump administration from cracking down on states’ ability to seek waivers from existing SNAP work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents — an omission that conservatives are touting as a win because it allows USDA to tighten the process without congressional approval.

The Department of Agriculture is expected to release a proposed rule on work requirement waivers in the coming weeks.

House Republicans were motivated to cut a deal in order to lock in agriculture and nutrition policy for farmers and ranchers, who have been battered by a series of retaliatory tariffs in key export markets prompted by Trump’s trade agenda. Commodity prices had already plunged since the 2014 farm bill — which expired Oct. 1 — and net farm income has been cut in half in recent years. Trump’s trade policies have worsened conditions in the agricultural economy.

Republicans also wanted to avoid having to pass a farm bill under a Democrat-controlled House, in which liberal and urban members could have sought policies unpopular with the agriculture lobby.

Under the final bill, the farm safety net, which includes commodity subsidies and federal crop insurance, would largely mirror existing law.

But commodity payments would be increased by about $1 billion over a decade, according to CBO. Commodity payments are issued when crop prices or farmers’ average revenue drops below certain levels. They cost between $5 billion and $8 billion annually. The increase was due in large part to a demand Conaway made during conference talks.

The final bill includes a House proposal to allow more distant relatives of farm owners to qualify for commodity subsidies, including first cousins, nieces and nephews. It also stripped a Senate attempt to further limit payments to wealthier producers. Those earning more than $900,000 a year in adjusted gross income would continue to be eligible for payments, which is current law. The Senate had proposed lowering that to $700,000.

The federal crop insurance program, which covers about 60 percent of producers premiums and shields against weather-related disasters, is maintained. It costs about $9 billion each year.

Overall conservation funding remained untouched, except for an annual cut of $800 million to a major working-lands initiative known as the Conservation Stewardship Program. Savings from that reduction were directed to improving other programs aimed at encouraging farmers to engage in practices that benefit the environment.

The bill also legalizes industrial hemp, a provision championed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The sweeping package — it runs 807 pages — includes a significant bump in funding for a host of local farming initiatives that were priorities for Senate Agriculture ranking member Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), including more money to help beginning farmers and ranchers, and the creation of a new urban agriculture office at USDA.

The bill also increases funding for incentivizing fruit, vegetable and dairy purchases in SNAP and increases funding for rural broadband.

Sarah Zimmerman contributed to this report.

