Partisan gridlock in Congress has led to a stalemate over the current farm bill, which includes crop subsidies and nutrition aid. (USDA photo by Lance Cheung.)
WASHINGTON — The stalemate over the current farm bill may herald a new era in agricultural policy, as it joins the last three farm bills in a trend of delays and partisan divisions — a contrast to the legislative history of bipartisanship.
Every five years, Congress is tasked with crafting a new federal farm bill. The omnibus bill that began 90 years ago as a variety of payments to support farmers now has an impact far beyond the farm, with programs to create wildlife habitat, tackle climate change and provide the nation’s largest federal nutrition program.
The current farm bill process, already nearly a year behind schedule, is at an impasse as Democrats and Republicans clash over how to pay for the bill and whether to limit food and climate programs. The previous farm bill was set to expire in September 2023 and has been extended until the end of September.
Historically, farm bills have been finalized within months of their expiration date. Ten of the 13 farm bills since 1965 were passed on December 31 of the year in which they expired. But three of the four farm bills since 2008 went beyond that date.
The last three bills — including the 2018 bill, the only recent version to pass on time — all faced partisan disagreements over spending.
This trend signals a change in the way legislation that previously passed both parties is viewed.
“The last two farm bills were an anomaly,” said Jonathan Coppess, a professor of agricultural law and policy at the University of Illinois who has written a history of farm legislation. “Now that it’s been three in a row, I’m not sure that’s still true.”
A recent report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that farm bills since 2008 have been plagued by delays, vetoes and insufficient votes to pass the House.
The report concluded: “Over time, farm laws have become more complex and politically sensitive. As a result, the timeline for reauthorization has become less certain.”
Debate on expenditure
That uncertainty extends to the current farm bill, as Republicans in the House and Senate push for spending limits that Democrats say are hopeless.
“I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere near a farm bill until the folks negotiating the farm bill are realistic about what can be done in a resource-constrained environment,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview on AgriTalk on June 21.
In late May, the Republican-led Agriculture Committee approved the farm bill largely along party lines after hours of debate and complaints from Democrats that the process was not as bipartisan as in previous years.
Four Democrats voted in favor of the bill in committee, but they joined 20 other Democrats on the committee in a letter outlining their “dissenting views” and expressing “sincere concerns about the direction of the majority’s partisan farm bill” — which they predicted would remain mired in delay and dysfunction without significant changes.
The Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to vote. The committee’s Republican and Democratic leaders have each introduced conflicting bills and expressed frustration.
‘The most frustrating time’
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who is retiring after this term, called the process the “most frustrating” of her career and said she would not let the Republican approach to the farm bill be her legacy.
“I’ve been involved in six farm bills and led three of them, and this was the most frustrating time,” Stabenow said in an interview with Michigan Progress end of June. “Because it is so much more partisan than normal, especially around food aid.”
Partisan divisions are not uncommon in Congress today, but they are notable in the farm bill, which historically has brought together lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Bipartisan support may be necessary for final passage, as the size of the $1.5 trillion farm bill means it will inevitably lose votes from fiscal conservatives and others.
“If you don’t have a bipartisan bill, this is not going to happen, and that’s regardless of who’s in charge. The margins are too small to do this without bipartisan support,” said Collin Peterson, a former Democratic House member from Minnesota and chairman of the Agriculture Committee.
The main contention for Democrats this year is a funding calculation that would impose limits on the Thrifty Food Plan formula, which calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.
Republicans are using the caps to offset other spending in the crop subsidy bill. The top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, said he wants to put “more farm in the farm bill.”
Peterson, who is now a director of a consulting firm of the same name, said in an interview with States Newsroom that Republicans will likely have to make changes to the title of the nutrition bill in order for it to pass.
“It’s unrealistic to think they can get this done without significant changes to that part of the law,” he said.
‘An uneasy alliance’ from the start
The nutrition program at the heart of the impasse was added to the legislation 50 years ago to build a coalition with broad bipartisan support.
Lawmakers added the title “food” to the farm bill in 1973, a move that increased the bill’s self-interest in the House. Lawmakers who wanted to increase payments to cotton and wheat farmers in their districts could get support from representatives from districts whose citizens could benefit from food aid.
“That was the first coalition-building between the two interests,” Coppess said. “But it was pretty intense. And it was an uneasy alliance from the start.”
Since then, the Farm Bill has become in many ways a food bill. Three-quarters of the mandated spending in the bill falls under the heading of food, including SNAP, the largest U.S. program addressing hunger.
The program, formerly known as food stamps, supplements food budgets for low-income households. Anti-hunger groups have joined outside interests in pushing for the bill every five years.
But the size of the funding has made the nutrition program a target for Republicans who want to cut it to offset other spending in the bill.
“The dispute is about all the payments,” Peterson said. “And that was the issue with the last three farm bills and this one as well.”
Peterson, who chaired the House Agriculture Committee before the 2008 farm bill and was the ranking Democrat on the committee before the 2013 and 2018 bills, said partisan divisions within the committee are not uncommon at this stage of the process.
The farm bills he worked on also received support in the House of Representatives, but ultimately received bipartisan support after consultation with the Senate.
“Ultimately, every one of those bills was partisan until we got it out of conference committee, and then it was bipartisan because the Senate put some of it on the table,” Peterson said. “So what’s happening here is what’s happened with the last three farm bills.”
The most recent farm bill, 2018, was marked by fierce partisan debate over SNAP work requirements and other eligibility rules.
The House Agriculture Committee bill that year was initially defeated on the House floor, but later passed narrowly by a vote of 213-211. Twenty Republicans joined all House Democrats in voting against the bill.
After reconciling the Senate bill and removing some of the controversial changes to SNAP, most Democrats changed their votes to support it and the House approved the final conference report in a bipartisan vote of 369-47. The dissenting votes included 44 Republicans and three Democrats.
A trend towards fracture
The division among the parties over the title of nutrition is creating new fault lines in the agricultural law.
Historically, farm bill alliances were more regional than partisan. They were based on a common foundation of support for shared crops or producers: cotton in the South, corn in the Midwest, and wheat in the Western Plains.
“What our biggest issue was in the four farm bills that I wrote was not Republican versus Democrat. It was usually Midwest versus Southeast or Northeast or Southwest from a crop standpoint,” former Sen. Saxby Chambliss said in an interview.
Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, served on the House Agriculture Committee from 1995 to 2002 and on the Senate Agriculture Committee from 2005 to 2011, where he also served as chairman and ranking member.
“There’s a different political dynamic in the Senate today that wasn’t there when I was there,” Chambliss said. “How much of that is going to trickle down into the farm bill? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s clearly a little more bitter than anything I’ve ever seen.”
As partisan politics took hold in parts of the country and the South became more closely associated with the Republican Party, this also affected the politics surrounding the farm bill.
“You see a strong reorientation in the areas where the regional and party political parties now resemble each other very much,” said Coppess.
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