$1.2T Farm Bill on Track for Vote in Mid-September

WASHINGTON — A lot of things don’t go as smoothly as they used to in Washington, but Rep. Glen “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., chair of the House Agriculture Committee, is bullishly predicting the $1.2 trillion farm bill currently before his panel will be put up for a vote in the full House by mid-September.

Thompson, who has been traveling the country for weeks to get first-hand advice from farmers and ranchers on what should be included in the bill, has repeated his prediction at each stop.

His goal, he says, is to have the committee vote on the bill shortly after the House returns from its August recess on Sept. 12, and to have it advance to the floor for consideration by the full House a day or so later.

The farm bill is an omnibus, multiyear law that governs an array of agricultural and food programs.

According to the Congressional Research Service, its reauthorization every five years provides lawmakers with an opportunity to comprehensively review agricultural and food issues, and enact or reauthorize measures to address them.

Since the 1930s, Congress has enacted 18 farm bills with strong bipartisan and bicameral support.

Since the early 1970s, however, farm bills have become increasingly expansive in nature with nutrition-related public assistance measures added as a provision.

Those programs have always been a flashpoint for some conservatives in the House, but this year, given the Republicans’ slim majority in the chamber, they could become the focus of outright battle on the floor.

The 2018 farm bill expires Sept. 30. Without reauthorization, some farm bill programs, such as the nutrition assistance and farm commodity support programs, would expire immediately.

Among those who have expressed concern about getting the bill done in time is Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who in June floated the idea that a short-term, one-year extension of current law may be needed to ensure its ultimate reauthorization for a full five years. 

But earlier this month, during a conference call with reporters, Grassley appeared to back off this suggestion.

He said he’d spoken to Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., since he proposed the short-term extension, and while she also believed the next farm bill might not get done by the Sept. 30 deadline, she expressed confidence that it could be done by the end of the year.

Grassley said Dec. 31 is the “drop-dead date” for the new farm bill because farmers and ranchers will need to know what the programs are before the start of the next calendar year.

He said Stabenow spoke with “considerable power and authority” on the issue of timing and that she convinced him the bill will be done before the end of the year.

Thompson responded by saying he “respectfully” disagrees with the senators.

“We can get our job done,” he tells attendees at his listening sessions.

He continues to maintain that he wants to pass a bicameral, bipartisan bill “on time,” meaning by the original Sept. 30 deadline.

“The clock is ticking pretty rapidly,” he says.

There are currently 12 “titles” or subsections of the farm bill. As spelled out in a farm bill primer by the Congressional Research Service, they are:

Title I, Commodities: Provides support for major commodity crops, including wheat, corn, soybeans, peanuts, rice, dairy and sugar, as well as disaster assistance. 

Title II, Conservation: Encourages environmental stewardship of farmlands and improved management through land retirement programs, working lands programs, or both. 

Title III, Trade: Supports U.S. agricultural export programs and international food assistance programs. 

Title IV, Nutrition: Provides nutrition assistance for low-income households through programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. 

Title V, Credit: Offers direct government loans and guarantees to producers to buy land and operate farms and ranches. 

Title VI, Rural Development: Supports rural housing, community facilities, business, and utility programs through grants, loans and guarantees. 

Title VII, Research, Extension and Related Matters: Supports agricultural research and extension programs to expand academic knowledge and help producers be more productive. 

Title VIII, Forestry: Supports forestry management programs run by USDA’s Forest Service. 

Title IX, Energy: Encourages the development of farm and community renewable energy systems through various programs including grants and loan guarantees. 

Title X, Horticulture: Supports the production of specialty crops, USDA-certified organic foods, locally produced foods and authorizes a regulatory framework for industrial hemp. 

Title XI, Crop Insurance: Enhances risk management through the permanently authorized Federal Crop Insurance Program. 

Title XII, Miscellaneous: Includes programs and assistance for livestock and poultry production, support for beginning farmers and ranchers and other miscellaneous and general provisions. 

Insiders with a knowledge of the talks on the bill say, generally speaking, bipartisanship continues to reign when it comes to most issues addressed by the bill.

“The one exception is the mandatory nutrition-program spending,” one of these individuals said, speaking on background about the process.

“This is the one issue where things get a little bit dicey, when it comes to Republicans and Democrats. But the rest of the talks have been very congenial.”

In addition to the slim margin of political control in the House, another reality that may impact the final vote on the bill is that a majority of current House members — 260 out of a total 435 — have never voted on a farm bill before.

In this regard, the listening sessions are said to really help.

Among other things, they enable the Ag committee chair to take the farm bill reauthorization process directly to members’ districts, where they talk to Ag producers, farmers, ranchers and consumers — all of them members’ constituents — about what needs to be tweaked.

“These sessions are invaluable,” one staffer who has traveled to many of them said. “Not only do they open the eyes of members to voter concerns they might not have been thinking about, but they provide us with a lot of information about how this bill should look when it’s done.”

A House Agriculture Committee staffer recently estimated the district visits have resulted in roughly 3,000 comment submissions through the panel’s public portal.

Another way the House Ag Committee has been handling member education is by taking members of the committee and pairing them with members who might be less well versed in farm and agricultural issues.

“Probably the biggest divide on the farm bill isn’t Republican and Democrat, it’s rural versus urban,” another insider said. “So what you see on the Hill is a lot of small, sort of informal sessions in which a member of the committee will walk through each of the various titles with them.

“Remember, this is a very large, complicated, expensive piece of legislation and so you’ve got to be a resource and share what knowledge you have with people who are less familiar with agriculture,” she added.

In addition to answering members’ questions, the committee has also been engaged in educating staffers by circulating “one-pagers” on the bill’s various provisions and rolling out video presentations on each title.

“It’s all about addressing as many questions as we can early, before things really start heating up,” she said.

Ask around the Hill whether Congress will meet the current Sept. 30 deadline for passing the farm bill, however, and things get a little fuzzy.

Understandably so.

With the start of August recess bearing down, the House has yet to pass the dozen spending bills that need to be approved before the end of the fiscal year (also Sept. 30); meanwhile the National Defense Authorization Act is just now advancing through the Senate, meaning a conference still has to be held to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions.

Those talks, which are expected to be volatile and protracted, have not even been scheduled yet.

On the other hand, Thompson and other Republicans on the Agriculture Committee say they’ve got the strong support of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to see that the bill does get done in a timely fashion.

In fact, Thompson loves to point out, McCarthy not only attended a farm bill listening session in Tulare, California, but stayed for over two-and-a-half hours to listen to farmers’ concerns.

The other open question right now is the Senate schedule.

“Obviously, in the House, we have no influence or say over what goes on on the other side,” a staffer said. “Right now, there are a couple of things sort of hanging in the air that we aren’t clear about just yet.”

“All we can do in the meantime is keep doing what we’ve been doing, educating members, drafting these titles, getting the legislation to where it can be shared with members and then, hopefully, getting it passed out of committee pretty rapidly after that,” they said.

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue