House to vote on half a farm bill Thursday

WASHINGTON — Democrats say a Republican effort to split food stamp funding from the federal farm bill is going to be just that: a Republican effort.

The House is expected to vote on the agriculture section of the now-two-part farm bill on Thursday. Democrats, from leadership to Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson to the rank-and-file, have said it’ll be up to Republicans to find the votes to pass the bill.

Rep. Tim Walz

“I think you decouple those who grow food from those who eat it, I think it creates the rift between the urban and rural that is already a challenge for us, and I think it turns back lots of work for many decades,” Democratic Rep. Tim Walz said Wednesday.

Republicans seem to be gambling that they’ll be able to find 218 votes in their caucus to pass about half of what has traditionally been a bipartisan bill after conservatives and most Democrats objected to the size of the cuts in the original bill to the food stamp program, for opposite reasons. Conventional wisdom suggests they found the votes needed for passage if they’re willing to bring the bill to the floor, but as late as mid-afternoon Wednesday, that was still in doubt.

“I would hope that 218 would be the key to doing a lot of things,” House Agriculture committee chairman Frank Lucas told a scrum of reporters. He laughed off a reporter questioning whether a tweet from his committee staff (Reading, “Lucas on #farmbill split idea: ‘if there aren’t 218 votes, if there’s no assurance of success, why try effort?’ ”) was a prediction of the bill’s doom in the House.

500 farm groups opposed

Republicans are trying to move the farm bill in two parts after a combined bill failed on the House floor in June. Sixty-two Republicans voted against the bill after calling for deeper cuts to the food stamps program; 172 Democrats voted against it arguing the cuts were too deep already.

The agriculture bill set to see House action Thursday is reportedly similar to the largely uncontroversial ag title in the original House bill, which would end direct subsidies to farmers and expand crop insurance programs, though it contains amendments added to the bill on the House floor. It would also repeal the 64-year-old “permanent law,” which is usually the impetus for passing farm bill overhauls every five years — currently, without a new bill in place, federal agriculture policy reverts to a law passed in 1948.

But agriculture groups and Democrats are united against the split. More than 500 ag groups sent House Speaker John Boehner a letter last week asking him not to decouple agriculture and food stamps and Peterson has called the move everything from “a dumb idea” to “stupid” to “lunacy.” In a statement Wednesday night, Peterson said: “I still believe splitting the farm bill is a mistake in the long run. They are ignoring the advice of most of the groups affected by the bill and I see no clear path to getting a bill passed by the House and Senate and signed by the President.”

The two other Democrats on the House Agriculture Committee, Walz and Rep. Rick Nolan, had said they’re inclined to oppose the bill on Thursday as well.

“It has no chance in the Senate, doing that, and I am not convinced that they have the votes on this anyway,” said Walz, one of only 24 Democrats to vote for the full farm bill in June.

MinnPost/File/Paul Walsh

Rep. Rick Nolan

“They’re going to have to find every vote, because I don’t know of a single Democrat that is going to vote to separate that, I don’t know of any farm groups that are in favor of separating that, and I know of a lot of Republicans that are against separating that,” Nolan said.

Even if the House passes the bill, it’s unlikely to become law: In the Democratic-controlled Senate, Agriculture Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow told the AP the split was a “major mistake,” and the White House is opposed. Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer called it a “dead-on-arrival messaging bill.”

Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry