House GOP drops food stamp cuts from massive farm bill after defeat last month

WASHINGTON ? Republican leaders hoping to recover from an embarrassing defeat on the House floor last month are preparing to split a massive farm bill in two and put it up for a vote as early as Thursday.

The GOP House leadership released a smaller version of the five-year bill late Wednesday, dropping a politically sensitive section of the legislation that would have made small cuts to the $80 billion-a-year food stamp program. Republicans are divided on how big cuts should be to food stamps, which have doubled in cost in the last five years. Democrats have opposed any cuts.

Republicans have been counting votes for the bill containing only the farm programs over the last two days, with a food stamp bill to come at a later date. Farm groups, anti-hunger groups and conservative groups have all opposed the idea, for different reasons.

The split bill is an attempt to gather support from conservatives who voted against the $100 billion-a-year farm bill. The House rejected the farm bill in June by a vote of 234-195, with 62 Republicans voting against it, many of them saying the bill's 3 percent cut in food stamps was not enough.

The idea is that the farm portion of the bill, which contains about $2 billion a year in cuts to farm subsidies, could pass without the food stamp provisions. By splitting the two, Republicans might be able to make bigger cuts in food stamp programs and pass that bill with conservative support.

House Democrats reacted angrily to the last-minute move. Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House, called it a "bill to nowhere" since the Democratic Senate is likely to add the food stamp money back in. The Democratic-led Senate, which overwhelmingly passed a farm bill with smaller cuts to food stamps, would be reluctant to go along with a split bill or further cuts to the programs.

"This dead-on-arrival messaging bill only seeks to accomplish one objective," Hoyer said. "To make it appear that Republicans are moving forward with important legislation even while they continue to struggle at governing."

Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, said he sees "no clear path to getting a bill passed by the House and Senate and signed by the president."

House Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., said as recently as last week that he opposed splitting the bill. But he has now reluctantly agreed to the strategy, saying he would support it if his Republican leaders could deliver the votes. Late Wednesday, he gave a reserved endorsement of the plan to the GOP-controlled Rules Committee, which determines the procedures for floor debate.

"Maybe the old dynamic of how we have done things since 1965 isn't valid anymore," he said. "Maybe it is time to try something different."

Source: http://www.startribune.com/politics/215003391.html

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