Inside D.C.

House Farm Bill Fracas

The fracas over food stamps and the Farm Bill is less about preserving a federal feeding program for the poor and more about the 2018 midterm elections, or at least that’s what the hallway experts would have you believe.

House Agriculture Committee Chair Mike Conaway (R, TX) saw his “first-quarter Farm Bill” strategy derailed this week when all 20 Democrats on his committee wrote him a letter saying there will be no more talk about work-eligibility requirements in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) until they can actually read the legislative language outlining what Conaway is proposing in his draft bill and he provides them the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “scores” – how much those changes cost or save.   This means his planned roll out of the 2018 Farm Bill draft and a full committee markup of that document the week of March 19, has been kicked until at least mid-April.

Admittedly SNAP and its related USDA feeding programs, i.e. Women Infant Children, which make up the Farm Bill’s nutrition title have long been contentious.  Every four years there’s a classic debate over whether the nutrition programs even belong in a bill designed primarily to reauthorize and reinvent income safety net, research, trade, energy and other USDA farm assistance programs.  Everyone knows the political logic:  Keep the two bills together so urban members have reason to vote for a Farm Bill.  But let us not forget:  The 2014 Farm Bill – which was supposed to be the 2012 Farm Bill – blew up on the House floor when the last amendment offered was to require SNAP recipients to work.  Lawmakers had to break the bills apart, pass them separately according to their particular politics and remarry the bills on the floor.

The sudden near-universal dedication of Democrats to the sanctity of the nutrition title generally and SNAP specifically, is annealed by the perceived vulnerability of the GOP given President Trump’s unconventional style of governance.  While history tells us the party of the sitting president generally loses seats in the midterm elections, the single loss by the GOP of a Pennsylvania House seat in a district Trump carried by 20 points, coupled with a Democrat Alabama Senate victory to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions has an overzealous media touting any GOP loss as the irrefutable signal that control of the House and/or the Senate will swing back to the Democrats.  There are four House seats to fill – two Democrats and two Republicans – and one open Senate seat.

When it comes to the Farm Bill, are House Democrats shifting into delay/block mode, the first of several major issue shifts between now and November?  There’s been lots of talk this week that the traditional bipartisanship that is the hallmark of ag policy generally and Farm Bills specifically may be set aside until after the midterm elections so that if there is a shift in chamber control, the Democrats get to write the Farm Bill in their image, not that of Conaway and Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI).

To regain the House majority, Democrats need to pick up 24 or so seats, and that kind of swing has happened more than once in the past.  It’s all about voter frustration with both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.