Over the past couple of months, the common target for enactment of the new farm bill has become “this year,” rather than the Sept. 30 expiration of the current law. Chairman Glenn Thompson of the House Agriculture Committee said on Tuesday that Sept. 30 was becoming uncomfortably close on the calendar.
Neither the House nor the Senate Agriculture committee has made public a first-round text of what is expected to be the most expensive farm bill ever. It is a remarkably late start for broad-spectrum legislation that usually requires a legislative marathon for passage.
“We want to see a 2023 farm bill before the end of the year,” said president Zippy Duvall of the American Farm Bureau Federation, following creation last week of a “Farm Bill for America’s Families” coalition “to urge passage of the 2023 farm bill this year.”
Congress often misses its farm bill deadlines, sometimes by a year or more, despite early vows to move with due speed and complete work on time. The 2018 farm law was delayed by House Republican attempts to cut SNAP benefits and did not become law until Dec. 20. The 2014 farm bill was the first to be defeated in the House — in June 2013, in a fight over SNAP. Months were spent in agreeing to pass the bill without cuts in SNAP.
The congressional “four corners” of the farm bill, the lawmakers who chair the Agriculture committees and the senior minority-party committee members of the minority party, quietly acknowledged the challenge of the calendar after meeting President Biden at the White House on May 11. In the first sentence of a joint statement, they said they discussed with Biden “the importance of passing a bipartisan farm bill this year.”
Thompson, who plans a committee vote in mid-September — two weeks before the current law expires — told Politico on Tuesday that Congress was “probably going to need an extension” of the current farm law. If it does, he said, it would be the Senate’s fault, not his.