Agriculture Panel Heads Meet on Farm Bill

Agriculture Panel Heads Meet on Farm Bill
The Senate and House Agriculture Committees began discussions on the Farm Bill and steps were taken to request a formal conference. Due to a motion by Stabenow, SNAP is a qualified subject for the House and Senate conference.

"Farm bill talks advanced Thursday as the top leaders of the House and Senate Agriculture Committees met to begin their discussions and the Senate later took the first steps to request a formal conference with the House.

“We are very serious about working together and getting this done,” Senate Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) told POLITICO. “And I am very confident we will.” That said, the Michigan Democrat had to endure a long afternoon of uncertainty before finally getting her consent request to go to conference through the Senate Thursday evening.

At one stage, the Democratic leadership thought the effort was doomed. But Stabenow went in and out of the GOP cloakroom and recruited Republican members of her committee to overcome threatened objections...

In a single stroke, the Stabenow motion served to call up and amend the House farm bill—approved last week—with the Senate’s fuller version that includes a nutrition title funding food stamps and local food banks around the country.

This is important because the House Republican leadership had jettisoned the same nutrition title last week to win back the votes of conservatives for the farm bill. By doing what she did, Stabenow establishes the nutrition programs as a qualified subject for the House and Senate conference.

Mindful of this, Republicans in the House are expected to slow walk the process of appointing conferees to give them more time to reach agreement on how to approach the food stamp issue."

Read the full article by David Rogers in Politico