Senate panel advances farm bill following McConnell’s return

The Senate Agriculture Committee passed “Farm Bill 2.0” out of committee on Wednesday following Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R- Ky.) return to Congress.

The vote passed 12-11 along party lines. Despite Democratic opposition, the bill was able to move forward once McConnell returned to the panel this week.

The senator was previously absent from Congress following a serious fall at his Washington home in June. During his absence, the panel was unable to pass the farm bill as Democrats voted together to block the legislation.

The farm bill is a sprawling agriculture and food aid package normally passed every five years. Congress has not passed a farm bill since 2018. The House passed its latest version in April.

Democrats on the panel have pushed back against a provision in the bill that would require states to help cover the cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding alongside the federal government if payment error rates in a state exceeded a certain point.

Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), the panel’s chair, compromised with Democrats, who had expressed concern about the provision earlier this summer, by offering a one-year delay.

“The rest of the story is this: we offered a one-year delay with no payment, no cost. It was rejected,” Boozman said during Wednesday’s meeting. “We’re running out of time, and we’re rapidly losing a window that we can actually get this thing passed.”

Boozman defended the provision, stating the intention behind it was to give states “the help they needed, get them under control, where they didn’t have error rates of 20-25 percent.”

The panel’s Democrats said the delay was not enough time for states like Minnesota and Colorado.

“We share this goal of reducing error rates, but we recognize the reality that states across the country need time and equal resources to bring them down,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), the ranking member on the panel, said during the meeting. “I appreciate Chairman Bozeman’s offer in this bill and the inclusion in this bill of this one-year delay, and it is a big start from where we were.”

The meeting started with an attempted amendment by Sen. Joni Ernest (R-Iowa) about the Save Our Bacon Act, but Boozman closed the door on her, saying, “you had the opportunity.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also attempted to make another amendment about stockyards and packers but was similarly shut down by the chair.