Though the GOP won key amendments, the final vote is an embarassment for them. Uncertain future for farm policy

The farm bill collapsed in the House on Thursday, the victim of continued divisions over food stamp cuts and the shape of future agriculture subsidies.

The 195-234 vote is an embarrassment for the Republican leadership and caps a remarkable year in which the GOP first blocked any farm bill floor action last summer and now was unable to prevail even after Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor won key amendments in the final hours.


Both amendments contributed to a deterioration of Democratic support even as the GOP still lost 62 of its own members on the right.

( Also on POLITICO: Who voted against the farm bill?)

Indeed, the 24 Democratic votes were a clear drop from the 40 that Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the Democratic floor manager, had predicted.

“I did have more Democrats,” Peterson told reporters after the vote. He said the “last straw” had been a Cantor-backed amendment that opened the door to states imposing more work requirements on able-bodied food stamp recipients.

Cantor sought to shift the blame back to Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, accusing the California Democrat of choosing “partisanship over progress.” And Republican aides insisted that Peterson should not have been surprised by the work amendment.

But after all the frustration of the past year, Cantor’s sudden prominence — coming down to speak after being otherwise silent — infuriated those close to Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.). And this all played out in an atmosphere in which Lucas had been working — with some success — to try to stem the Democratic bleeding on the nutrition issue.

First, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), a member of the panel, agreed to allow his food stamp amendment to die on a voice vote. Second, Lucas and Peterson combined forces to kill a proposal that not only added work requirements but also demanded an additional $11 billion in cuts.

“What is happening on the floor today was major amateur hour,” said Pelosi, who had to pass a farm bill herself as speaker in 2007 with just 19 Republican votes at the time. “They didn’t get results and they put the blame on somebody else.”

“It’s another day in the unproductive life on the Republican Congress where they bring bills to the floor that are going nowhere and they blame other people for their lack of success. As I say, another day in the amateur hour of the Republican Congress.”

At a time when sequestration is bleeding government agencies of discretionary funds, the farm bill had been one of the few examples of the parties working together to reduce mandatory spending. The Senate version promises more than $24 billion in 10-year savings; the House, $39.7 billion. Even a split would have been the first real progress on the deficit prior to the appropriations and debt battles that will follow after Labor Day.

“I am shocked by today’s outcome,” said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.). “We now face an uncertain future for farm policy.”

“While this farm bill proposal was not perfect, it would have helped write a new chapter in agricultural policy for the good of our farm families and all Americans — rural and urban, alike. It included important reforms that trimmed its total costs to taxpayers, provided better risk management tools for farmers, ended the practice of providing direct cash payments across the board and placed limits on the amount of federal payments any one farm is eligible to receive.”

For farm bill advocates, the collapse was more bitter because, just hours before, there had been new hope of completing the measure in rapid order before the weekend.

Wednesday night, Lucas had agreed to a sweeping en bloc amendment to expedite matters, and after a seesaw battle, the leadership narrowly beat back demands for tough new payment and income limits on subsidies for crop insurance.

In the two biggest commodity battles, powerful sugar and milk interests were matched against equally powerful corporate interests with a stake in keeping down prices for these products.

The sugar program survived, but in the case of dairy, Boehner and powerful processors won on their amendment to strike a provision that they feared would raise prices by giving the government a greater hand in controlling supplies.

Boehner’s win cost Peterson some of his Democratic votes on final passage, and he said this made the timing of the Cantor proposal all the more difficult. In his desire to get the farm bill to conference, Peterson has sometimes seemed to underplay the anger in his caucus over the food stamp issue, and Republicans would argue that he failed to carry his freight. But Peterson said he was fully aware of the perils Thursday and had hoped that Cantor would not persist.

“The timing was terrible. And I told Eric that,” Peterson said later. “I told Lucas [to] be careful with this one because they’ve about had it. And when that came up at the last deal, … I had a bunch of people come up to me and say, ‘I was with you, but this is it. I’m done.’”

The chief sponsor of the amendment, Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.), further aggravated Democrats by insisting on a recorded vote, even after the chair had ruled his amendment had been approved by voice.

“If you overreach, you get nothing,” Peterson said. “And that’s what we’ve been trying to tell people. You carry this too far and you’ll get no reduction in the deficit. You’ll get no reform of the farm programs. You will continue food stamps exactly like they are with no changes. And you’ll continue crop insurance with no changes. And that could be where we’re at.”

“You take things too far, and sometimes it blows up.”

What happens next is far from clear. “It turned out to be a heavier lift than even I expected,” said Lucas. Reviving the farm bill now won’t be any lighter a burden, given the messy way the debate ended and bruised feelings left behind.

Nonetheless, there is little appetite for a full-scale extension of the current farm program as was done last year — and as all sides begin to recognize the results, commodity groups will press for a renewed effort.

The National Corn Growers Association said it was “extremely disappointed” but quickly released a statement saying it wanted to be “engaged in all efforts needed to secure passage in the House and bring the bill to conference.”

Lucas also signaled he will try again. “We are assessing all of our options, but I have no doubt that we will finish our work in the near future,” he said. And one big question is whether the committee will shed some of its insularity and embrace more reforms as a way to win back Democrats angered by the food stamp cuts.

A proposed $50,000 cap per farmer on crop insurance premium subsidies failed only narrowly and is too severe for Peterson and Lucas to accept. But some cut in the 62 percent subsidy rate is doable without jeopardizing the larger program.

“If additional moderate crop subsidy reform amendments had been allowed … the chances for the farm bill passing would have been considerably better,” said the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “We still need a new farm bill, but one with more reform.”