The House’s two major agriculture and nutrition bills look vulnerable to Republican divisions for the rest of the legislative session even if the majority can elect a new speaker to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy and resume work on legislation.
The fiscal 2024 Agriculture appropriations bill could fall victim to GOP disagreement after more than two dozen Republicans last month rejected stiff spending cuts demanded by members of their own party.
And the farm bill being drafted to replace the 2018 law faces the risk of another Republican effort to cut food aid that could go too far for other lawmakers, but that measure’s major hurdle may be the calendar.
The bills face some common obstacles: the absence of a speaker since Oct. 3 and the Republican majority’s disagreement over a replacement for McCarthy, R-Calif.; the need to again take up government funding legislation when a continuing resolution expires Nov. 17; the possibility that legislation to provide U.S. aid to Israel and Ukraine for wars against Hamas and Russia will reignite House Republican division; and the shortening legislative calender.
House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, says he will seek another vote to become speaker after not getting enough support in his own conference twice this week. A founder of the House Freedom Caucus, Jordan initially told colleagues Thursday he’d support giving broader powers to Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick T. McHenry temporarily while he worked to build support, then shifted gears after that idea sparked a furor in the GOP conference.
Fiscal 2024 appropriations
Whoever becomes speaker will first have to thread an appropriations needle to avoid a shutdown when the continuing resolution expires Nov. 17.
Greg Silverman, CEO of the West Side Campaign Against Hunger food pantry in New York City, said the threat of a Sept. 30 shutdown brought a record 590 families in a single day to one of its distribution sites. Congress cleared the stopgap funding bill only hours before the deadline.
Silverman said most of the people who arrived that day didn’t fully understand the dynamics at play in Congress. But those receiving federal food assistance worried if their children would still have access to free or reduced-price school meals and whether they would have to stretch food dollars even more if October benefits did not arrive.
But the path ahead for the spending bill to fund the Agriculture Department, Food and Drug Administration and Commodity Futures Trading Commission is also murky.
Freedom Caucus members called for discretionary spending below the levels McCarthy negotiated with President Joe Biden in a debt ceiling agreement during the summer.
The Agriculture measure as amended in the rule for floor debate would provide $15.1 billion in fiscal 2024 and redirect another $7.5 billion in unobligated funds from the past, for a total of $22.6 billion, a decrease of roughly 13 percent from fiscal 2023. Floor amendments further reduced funding by approximately $280 million.
The House rejected that bill on Sept. 28. And the 27 Republicans who joined the Democrats in opposition weren’t the same group that had been a thorn in the side of McCarthy this year. They represent constituencies where the programs funded by the bill are popular. And because the spending measure has already been amended on the floor, it’s unclear where it goes next for changes.
Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger, R-Texas, said shortly after the House vote that with so much “going and stirring” around the speaker selection, she was unsure about the next step for reviving the bill. The rejection also threatens House GOP plans to pass all 12 fiscal 2024 spending bills.
Rep. Frank D. Lucas, R-Okla., a former House Agriculture chairman and a member of the panel, Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., a dairy farmer and a House Agriculture Appropriations member, and Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., another House Agriculture Appropriations member, were among those voting against the bill.
Lucas said the calculation was that “the rest of us would be good little boys and girls and go along. I’ve got a voting card just like the other 434 of my friends. I have a responsibility to my 800,000 constituents just like everybody else.”
Alluding to McCarthy, he said, “previous management basically let everything be thrown to the wall to try to get enough pieces to stick to drag it across.”
“The product that came out of Ag appropriations was such that those of us who are aggies and the body general couldn’t support it,” said Lucas. “From my perspective personally — and everyone has a different perspective — the watershed upstream flood control programs, the rehabilitation programs I have worked on for two-and-half decades, were zeroed out. That just didn’t make sense when the climate and the weather is more volatile, in a time when we have more droughts and floods.”
Valadao said the funding reduction approved by the full Appropriations Committee “was already a lot” but he drew the line at nearly $3 billion in additional reductions made by a self-executing rule adopted by the House ahead of the vote on the spending bill.
“We want to make sure that whatever bill that comes is one that we want to find ways to save money, but obviously we’ve got to do it in a way that doesn’t harm agriculture, doesn’t harm people who desperately need food assistance,” Valadao said.
Newhouse, a former Washington state agriculture director, said “some of the huge across-the-board cuts would make it very difficult for us to deliver services. What’s important to me are research and marketing.” He said any cuts in a revised bill can’t be broad-brush.
The bill drew bipartisan opposition because of the spending cuts and a rider that would reverse the FDA’s January changes to distribution requirements for the abortion drug mifepristone. The measure would reinstate a rule that patients must see a clinician in person to receive the drug, rather than get it from a pharmacy like other prescriptions.
House Agriculture Appropriations Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., who pushed for the mifepristone provision, was terse after the vote about the future of the spending bill. “Ask the 27 Republicans who voted against the bill,” he said.
Even House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., one of the leaders in the effort to draft a farm bill, said he didn’t like the spending bill. He said he voted to pass it with a goal of setting it up for negotiations with Senate appropriators “to fix the flaws.”
Thompson said he was encouraged by “the resounding bipartisan defeat of the Ag appropriations bill, which was a bad bill. It didn’t really reflect the needs of America’s number one industry.”
Farm bill
The House and Senate Agriculture committees missed their initial deadline of Sept. 30, the day the 2018 farm bill expired. But committee leaders say they can still deliver a final negotiated bill by Dec. 31. Missing that deadline would send some programs back to operational practices of the 1940s unless Congress approves an extension of the expired farm bill.
Thompson said he would like to release text in November if a new speaker has been elected.
“We’re coming along rather well, actually. I would say I think the House Agriculture Committee is in a really good place,” Thompson said, adding that he would love to release a draft bill in November. “But we’ll see.”
Thompson and his colleagues face several hurdles, though.
The Freedom Caucus is eyeing additional restrictions on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the farm bill that would go beyond raising the maximum ages for able-bodied adults without dependents who would be subject to time-limited food assistance and work requirements.
Silverman, at the West Side food pantry, said trimming SNAP would result in Congress “throwing more of the burden on the charity sector to be the safety net. We can’t do the job of the city, state and the federal government.”
SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program, is often a point of contention between conservatives who want limits on assistance and Democrats who want to expand benefits.
Thompson is trying to navigate between the differing priorities on food assistance and the drive to rein in spending to deliver a bipartisan bill. He said last week he had spoken with Jordan.
“Jim, also with his district that he has, recognizes the importance of agriculture and its dominance as the number one industry not just in the state of Ohio but across the country. He recognizes how important agriculture is to the vast majority of Republican members. That’s the feedback I got from Jim,” Thompson said.
House Agriculture ranking member David Scott, D-Ga., is holding out hope that the farm bill can be bipartisan.
A spokesman said via email that Scott “is focused on negotiating a bipartisan farm bill with Chairman GT Thompson. He hopes that the next Speaker of the House, whoever they may be, will have the good sense to allow the bipartisan work of the Agriculture Committee to continue. Passing such a bill remains ranking member Scott’s top priority.”
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