A month ago, the lead negotiators on the farm bill linked arms in a show of unity and said they wanted to have the $87 billion-a-year legislation ready for a vote when Congress convened for its post-election session. The lame duck session opens Tuesday and one lobbyist says there is no chance of a vote this week because of many unresolved issues, including the headline question of stricter SNAP work requirements sought by House Republicans.
The brief lame-duck session, scheduled to end by Dec. 14, is the last chance to pass the farm bill, with the fall-back option of a stopgap revival of the 2014 farm policy law that expired on Sept. 30. Democrats will take control of the House in January so prospects are dimming for the GOP’s SNAP package. House Democrats voted uniformly against the stricter work requirements last summer. If the bill does not pass in the lame duck session, then the Senate and House will have to start on a new farm bill in January.
“I don’t see that they (House Republicans) have any leverage anymore,” said Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, now the senior Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee and in line to become chairman in six weeks. On the “Adams on Agriculture” program last week, Peterson said “we are not going to be, probably, ready to move on it (farm bill) next week.”
Peterson met House Agriculture chairman Michael Conaway, of Texas, briefly on Monday without apparent progress on the farm bill.
“We could have it very fast without the work rules, but we want the work rules in, and the Democrats just don’t want to vote for that,” said President Trump last week, gliding over bipartisan opposition in the Senate to the House’s “welfare reform in the farm bill” proposal. The GOP-written House farm bill would require an estimated 7 million “work capable” adults ages 18-59 to work at least 20 hours a week or spend equivalent time in job training or workfare to qualify for food stamps.
Conaway drafted the SNAP package and has been a dogged advocate of it as a way to move people work and to help them move up the employment ladder. Foes say there won’t be enough money for high-quality job training and people will be disqualified unfairly from SNAP by the paperwork maze that will accompany the work-or-training rules.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said passage of the farm bill is one of his top priorities for the lame duck session, including a compromise on work requirements. “That’s the part that gets a little tricky, but we’ll get there,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky over the weekend.
Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, who oversees the farm bill negotiations and who chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee, said the House package on SNAP was unacceptable in the Senate, which voted 2-to-1 against a 25 hour-a-week work requirement. “It’s just not that simple. It just isn’t,” Roberts told McClatchy, referring to suggestions that the Senate should accede to the House GOP.
Roberts is up for re-election in 2020. McClatchy said Roberts needs to steer the farm bill to passage to demonstrate his political power and drive away potential challengers.