Farm Bill voted down by House GOP

At first glance, the farm bill – which sets agriculture policy, authorizes the massive program of taxpayer supports and subsidies for farmers, and controls spending on food assistance programs – was an odd piece of legislation to get snared in the ongoing fight over immigration.

“Republicans wrote their own bill behind closed doors and barred the door when we showed up to work with them”, Bustos said.

House Republican leadership is now struggling with immigration issues and it’s put the House farm bill that didn’t pass on Friday right on the back burner.

The USDA’s legislative principles of the Farm Bill can be found here.

After a group of Republicans made a decision to vote against the H.R. 2, Agriculture and Nutrition Act of 2018, the bill was rejected by The House of Representatives Friday, May 18.

With Wisconsinite Ryan having announced that he’ll be stepping aside and not seeking re-election at the end of the current term, the speaker is the lamest of lame ducks.

The conservative bill would now reduce legal immigration, clear the way for construction of President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico and let Dreamers stay in the US for renewable three-year periods.

The farm invoice, a five-year renewal of federal farm and vitamin coverage, sometimes is supported by a coalition of farm-state Republicans who again federal agriculture subsidies and different help and Democrats supporting meals stamps. The Freedom Caucus gets the blame – or credit – for defeating the bill, but the more interesting story is why their small number of votes mattered to a bill that is usually a bipartisan slam dunk. The biggest chunk is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, the program formerly known as food stamps), that provides 40 million people with support for food purchases.

The president was “disappointed in the result of today’s vote”, Lindsay Walters, deputy White House press secretary, said in a statement May 18.

“However, she does not believe that the important Farm Bill should be held up over this”, Flanagin said. Current farm programs begin to expire September 30 without new legislation.

But Meadows does not want to leave the decision up to majority rule.

Rep. Tom Reed, New York Republican, likened the conservatives’ farm bill-immigration standoff to hostage negotiations. The move by the hard-right House Freedom Caucus appears to have put passage of the measure Friday in jeopardy.

But throwing out the work requirements remains unlikely because they’re backed by Trump and Ryan. I can tell you that I came out of a meeting with moderates and RSC [Republican Study Committee] members and I think that we are extremely close on finding a bill that gets to 218 and actually could get to 270, maybe even 300 votes in the House and then we can send it over to the Senate. They are subject to a three-month limit of benefits unless they meet a work requirement of 80 hours per month.

The measure, which would have imposed stronger work requirements on 40,000 food stamp recipients in New York’s 21st Congressional District, was voted down in the House 213 to 198 on Friday. Democrats counter that the provisions would reduce benefits and increase paperwork without effectively getting people into the labor force.

He also said he expected, as the bill progressed, that lawmakers would add in language to either decriminalize hemp for industrial purposes or remove it from the federal definition of marijuana, and streamline the seed certification process.