Farm Bill Fight

Farm Bill Fight

Farm Bill Fight. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

The House GOP is refusing to go to formal conference with the Senate on a farm bill until the House acts on a separate food stamp bill. The fight over farm bill process and politics got ugly on Friday as House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer asked GOP Majority Leader Eric Cantor if he plans to bring up next week a motion to go to conference - but it wasn’t the farm bill Cantor wanted to talk about.

CANTOR: It is our hope that we can get a nutrition bill to the floor because we believe strongly that the programs under those titles providing a safety net to the countries most vulnerable - something important that we maintain and we implement the kinds of reforms to those programs that have long been called for by the GAO and others.

But that was not the response Hoyer wanted to hear.

HOYER: Three weeks ago you told me that the reason we passed that farm bill without the provision for nutrition was so that we could go to conference. Well, now we’re there but there’s no motion to go to conference.

Hoyer then asked Cantor if he was conditioning a conference on acting on nutrition first, but Cantor now says it’s not about the farm bill after all.

CANTOR: We believe strongly that marriage of the two constituencies of the old farm bill was a marriage that began some 40 years ago and frankly it is the sense of the majority in the House that marriage makes little sense.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network. 

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