May 18, 2018

Farm Bill voted down in US House

A proposed 2018 Farm Bill failed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday, May 18.

The Republican leadership failed to gather votes from its conservative members, national news media reported, and the bill failed 198-213.

House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway, a Republican from Texas, called the vote a “setback.”

“We may be down, but we are not out,” he said. “We will deliver a strong, new farm bill on time as the President of the United States has called on us to do. Our nation’s farmers and ranchers and rural America deserve nothing less.”

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said the Farm Bill was necessary for growers.

“Our farmers feed the people of this nation and the world, and they deserve the certainty of a Farm Bill,” Perdue said.

U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat from Michigan who is the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, in April said the bill was a partisan effort that made it “impossible to pass a five-year farm bill.”

“I remain committed to working with (Senate Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican) to write a bipartisan bill in the Senate focused on our farmers, families, and rural communities in Michigan and across the country,” she said.

In his opening statements to House in April, Conaway said the Farm bill was not bipartisan because representatives couldn’t agree on policy for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), often called food stamps.